The perfect time to teach your children healthy eating 

The Globe and Mail 
Parents have new opportunities to teach healthy eating now that children are eating all of their meals and snacks at home.  Families are able to share meals together, a habit that’s encouraged by Canada’s Food Guide. Studies have found that children who regularly eat family dinners consume more fruits and vegetables, and fewer unhealthy foods than children who don’t.  
Read the article here

Avoiding sodas may be good for your heart, new research suggests

Washington Post 
According to a study published in February in the Journal of the American Heart Association, avoiding soda may have a positive effect on heart health. Researchers from Tufts and Boston universities looked at over 12 years’ worth of data from about 6,000 adult participants in the Framingham Heart Study, a long-term, ongoing research project focused on cardiovascular health. People who had more than one serving of sugar-sweetened beverages each day over the past four years had lower HDL cholesterol and higher triglycerides – levels that may signify an increased risk of heart disease.  Read the article here

National study finds diets remain poor for most American children; disparities persist

Tufts Now 

Despite consuming fewer sugar-sweetened beverages and more whole grains, most American children and adolescents still eat poorly – and sociodemographic disparities persist, according to an 18-year national study between 1999 and 2016 of U.S. children’s dietary trends. Read the story here

You can find the study here (behind a paywall)

Seattle Turns Soda Tax Revenue into Emergency Grocery Vouchers During Pandemic

Next City

Seattle is using its soda tax fund to provide emergency $800 grocery vouchers for 6,250 families. Sent in two installments, the first round of vouchers that can be put toward groceries have already been mailed. The second round will be mailed in April. Read the story here

Combatting a sweet tooth: the role of health marketing

Biomedical Central

A recent study published in BMC Public Health aimed to determine whether Public Health England’s Sugar Smart campaign was effective in altering dietary behaviour, by assessing any impact of the campaign on sugar intake among children aged 5-11 years. Overall it was found that the health marketing campaign raised awareness of sugar in food and drinks in both parents and children, impacting food consumption in families.  Read the article here

Cereal numbers may be deceiving

Reuters (appeared in the Montreal Gazette)

Parents may allow kids to eat too much sugary breakfast cereal because the suggested serving size is smaller than they realize, a new U.S. study suggests. The cereals with the most sugar also tend to have child-oriented marketing such as mascots, games, colours and fun shapes, researchers found in a study of brands that have pledged to help reduce added sugars in kids’ diets. “When you compute the amount of sugar by weight of the cereal, the sugar content is quite high and higher than federal recommendations,” said Jennifer Emond of the Dartmouth School of Medicine in Hanover, N.H., who wasn’t involved in the study. Read the article here

You can find the study here (paywall)

The scoop on Unilever’s new marketing commitments

Strategy Magazine

Strategy magazine looks at Unilever’s decision to stop marketing and advertising foods and beverages to children under the age of 12 in traditional media, and below the age of 13 on social media. The article features an interview with Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition co-chair Manuel Arango. Read the article here

‘Broad support’ for taxes on unhealthy food in Germany

Food Navigator

In an online survey, researchers from the Marketing for Food and Agricultural Products research group at the University of Gottingen asked consumers about various measures currently under discussion, such as advertising bans on children’s food with high sugar content, or sugar and soft drink taxes.  Overall, 60% of those surveyed were in favour of nutrition policy action by the state.  Read more here

 

Path from junk food to poor decisions drawn by Western University researchers

The London Free Press

In a paper published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health this month, researchers found that too many calorie-dense foods can lead to changes in the part of the brain that controls self-regulation, decision-making and reward-seeking. Adolescence, the researchers found, is a time of “dual susceptibility,” when teens are still developing their ability to make decisions, which leads to a lack of self-control when it comes to junk food. And all that junk food may lead to changes in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the last area to develop, Reichfelt referred to the prefrontal cortex as “the manager of the brain” because it controls behaviour. Read more here

Sydney kids face up to 2800 ads for junk food on school run each year

Sydney Morning Herald

Sydney students view up to 2800 advertisements for junk food while travelling to and from school each year prompting Cancer Council NSW to call for a ban on such ads being displayed on government property. Research, published by the Sax Institute on Tuesday, examined the likely commutes of attendees at 21 Sydney primary and high schools, totalling 23,000 students. Read the article here