Sugar-sweetened beverages, including chocolate milk, are the leading source of added sugars in youths' diets. During the 2017-18 school year, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) implemented a policy removing chocolate milk from school lunches as part of a district-wide strategy to reduce students' intake of added sugars. A new research brief from the University of California, Nutrition Policy Institute (UC NPI) describes the impact of this policy on students' intake of milk and its associated nutrients. This impact was measured by UC researchers in a study of students' milk selection and consumption in 24 SFUSD middle and high schools during one lunch period at each school during each study year. The study included 3,158 students in 2016 before the policy and 2,966 students after the policy was implemented in 2018. Study results showed that after chocolate milk was removed, milk taking at lunch declined, but average per-student intake of key nutrients from milk did not. In addition, students' intake of added sugars from milk declined significantly. The study suggests that removing chocolate milk from school cafeterias may improve student nutrition. The research brief encourages schools to consider eliminating chocolate milk to help reduce students' added sugar intake. The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers at the UC NPI, UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Berkeley Food Institute, and SFUSD Student Nutrition Services. This work is supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative grant no. 2015-68001-23236 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The research brief is available online. The full research study is also available online.

Feeding America published a new resource, the Nutrition in Food Banking Toolkit, aimed to guide the charitable food sector to better meet the nutritional and cultural food needs of people they serve. The toolkit, released on March 23, 2021, was developed by Feeding America's Nutritious Food Revisioning Task Force, made up of more than a dozen food banks and national organization staff, with input and expertise from partnering organizations. This first edition of the Nutrition in Food Banking Toolkit is composed of three main sections, each focused on a different aspect of the charitable food system. Healthy Eating Research (HER) Nutrition Guidelines for the Charitable Food System provides recommendations to improve the quality of food in food banks and food pantries in order to increase access to healthier food for food-insecure households. Applying an Intercultural Competence Lens provides insights and recommendations for developing nutrition-related cultural competence at the organizational, partner, and individual levels. Role of Food Bank Nutrition Policies: A Guide to Action provides food banks with strategies to achieve nutrition policies that lead to a more nutritious food supply. The final section on food bank nutrition policies was developed by University of California (UC) Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) researcher Karen Webb and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources advisor Laura Vollmer. This section was adapted from NPI's Guide to Drafting a Food Bank Nutrition Policy, which was created for the online course Developing a Food Bank Nutrition Policy. Toolkit partners include Healthy Eating Research (HER); the CDC's Nutrition and Obesity Policy Research and Evaluation Network; UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity; UC NPI; MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger; Partnership for a Healthier America; and Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. The toolkit is available online.

Researchers at the Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI), University of California, Davis, and the University of South Carolina published a new study describing the use of factor analysis methods to evaluate the effectiveness of school nutrition environments on child health outcomes. Given the complexity of school food environments, factor analysis can be a useful method in identifying latent or unmeasured factors underlying observed environmental characteristics to determine which have the largest influence on child health outcomes. Researchers applied this method to data collected from the Healthy Communities Study which included 4,635 children in the US between the ages of four and 15 years from 386 elementary and middle schools in 2013–2015. Although the findings from the study were mixed, results suggest that restriction of unhealthy foods in school is associated with lower added sugar intake by children. The study was published online in March 2021 in The Journal of Nutrition. Co-authors include Marisa Tsai, Lorrene Ritchie, and Gail Woodward-Lopez from NPI, Lauren Au from the University of California, Davis, and Edward Frongillo from the University of South Carolina. The study was funded by a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Previous research conducted by the University of California (UC) Nutrition Policy Institute identified that, in 2016, 44 percent of undergraduate and 26 percent of graduate students at the UC reported having experienced food insecurity; in addition, 5 percent of students reported experiencing homelessness at some point during their enrollment. A new study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion by NPI, UC San Francisco, and Washington State University researchers explores how UC students define basic needs and reports on their experiences of housing insecurity, and food insecurity within the context of housing insecurity. Fifty-eight UC undergraduate and graduate students were recruited from basic needs centers at five UC campuses to participate in researcher-led focus groups. Results showed that UC students define basic needs as more than minimal food and shelter, but also include mental health, well-being, hygiene and safety; they also reported that meeting basic needs was the joint responsibility of students and the university. Students reported multifaceted housing insecurity issues, said that affording rent is a priority that most often leads to experiencing food insecurity, and also that transportation was a key barrier to meeting their basic needs. Further, students with non-traditional characteristics, graduate students, and out-of-state students reported facing unique challenges in meeting basic needs. Limited financial aid, lack of financial aid guidance and unanticipated University fees were additional barriers reported by students to meeting basic needs. Students reported that additional university basic needs services, such as food pantries and other free food programs, were essential in supporting their basic needs. The findings demonstrate the need for multi-faceted basic needs programs that go beyond food and housing on college campuses. The study was led by Suzanna Martinez of UC San Francisco in collaboration with Erin Esaryk and Lorrene Ritchie of NPI, and Laurel Moffat of Washington State University. The study was funded by a grant from the UC Global Food Initiative. The full study is available online. 

Nutrition Policy Institute's Lorrene Ritchie and Wendi Gosliner, in collaboration with Gurpinder Singh Lalli of the University of Wolverhampton, are guest editors of a Special Issue on “Improving School Nutrition: Innovations for the 21^st Century” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH). As guest editors, they are soliciting manuscript submissions for the Special Issue, which focuses on 21st-century global innovations in school nutrition to overcome challenges and improve the diet, food security, and ultimately the health and wellbeing of school-aged children. Topics of interest are organized in four overarching themes: (1) Food Security, Meal Participation, and Investments in School Food, (2) Nutrition in School Meals, (3) Environmental Sustainability, and (4) Food Literacy and Nutrition Education in Schools. In addition, manuscripts will be considered that cover cross-country comparisons of school nutrition models and outcomes; research on school nutrition from underrepresented regions; and recent lessons learned from adaptations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Manuscript types accepted include new research papers involving interventions, secondary data analyses, or qualitative data analyses, reviews, position papers, brief reports, and commentaries. The deadline for manuscript submissions is December 31, 2021. Information on the special issue and submission is available online.

Nutrition Policy Institute's Suzanne Rauzon received funding from the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute to conduct a community health needs assessment for community members served by Kaiser Permanente in California. The 10-month project began in February 2021.

Nutrition Policy Institute's (NPI) Lorrene Ritchie and Stanford Medicine Department of Pediatrics' Anisha Patel were awarded $149,545 from the Dairy Council of California to examine the effects of different milk types on young children's health. The pilot study will enroll 30 Northern California families with children 12 months old to receive either whole milk or non-fat milk. The type of milk optimal for the health of young children has not been clearly established. Therefore, the pilot study will examine how different milk types affect children's weight, length, waist circumference, heart health, cognitive development, and gut microbiota. Results from the pilot study will be used to inform a larger, more rigorous randomized control trial involving 500 children. The 14-month project began in March 2021 with NPI's Suzanne Rauzon as the project manager.

Nutrition Policy Institute's Gail Woodward-Lopez co-authored a commentary in JAMA Pediatrics on the importance of body mass index assessment (BMI) and surveillance in schools. The commentary was written in collaboration with Anisha Patel of the Stanford Medicine Department of Pediatrics and Emma Sanchez-Canaugh of the San Francisco State University Department of Public Health. Woodward-Lopez and co-authors highlight the benefits of and need to sustain BMI screening and related school-based surveillance systems despite recent research suggesting that BMI screening and reporting in schools was not associated with reductions in student BMI. They suggest that these systems are important to maintain in order to evaluate policy and program effectiveness at the school and state level, monitor population trends and disparities, and identify places and populations requiring targeted obesity interventions. The commentary was published online on February 22, 2021.

The Notah Begay III (NB3) Foundation has released a new interactive resource for Indigenous communities and all communities interested in increasing consumption of drinking water in place of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB). The resource, Increase Healthy Beverage Consumption and Reduce Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (SSBs): A Community Roadmap, displays easy-to-understand concepts, developed from high-level research. The resources guides users through five steps, each offering specific information, links and resources. It was created in partnership with the NB3 Foundation, the National Tribal Water Center, and the Nutrition Policy Institute's (NPI) Christina Hecht and Laura Vollmer, who coordinate NPI's National Drinking Water Alliance.