by Eryn Brown and Teresa Watanabe
Since state laws made it harder for California elementary school kids to get their hands on sugary drinks and junk food snacks on campus, researchers found, students’ risk of becoming overweight or obese fell slightly — but mostly if they came from higher-income neighborhoods.
Examining body mass index measurements of 2,700,880 fifth-graders in the state over 10 years, researchers found that students in those neighborhoods saw their odds of exceeding a healthy weight fall by about 1% a year. For all other students, the trends remained essentially flat.
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Childhood obesity is certainly a complex issue, and one that requires a multi-faceted, education-based approach to change health behaviors in a substantive way. This extends to our overall diet, activity, parental involvement in guiding choices, and more. To date, our industry has led the way on a number of key initiatives to do our part on this important issue. For instance, we voluntarily implemented national School Beverage Guidelines - effectively removing full-calorie soft drinks and cutting beverage calories in schools nationwide by 90 percent. This action helped set the stage for the USDA’s new regulations, and our latest collaborative efforts to align food and beverage signage in schools with the new regulations. We believe ongoing progress on this front will be accelerated when everyone comes together in a concerted way - government, academia, healthcare and businesses like ours.
-American Beverage Association