Research on Retail Food and Beverages
Evaluation of Healthy Checkout Ordinance
Berkeley, California
On March 1, 2021, Berkeley, CA, implemented an ordinance to improve the healthfulness of food and beverages sold within 3 ft. of cash registers in large commercial food establishments such as supermarkets or grocery stores, selling ≥25 linear ft. of food.
Policy Provisions
- Allowable checkout food and beverage categories: chewing gum and mints with no added sugars, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, yogurt or cheese, or whole grains.
- Beverages at checkout cannot have added sugars or artificial sweeteners.
- Foods at checkout cannot have ≥5 grams of added sugars and/or ≥200 mg of sodium per serving.
Research
- Team: Evaluation led by Dr. Jennifer Falbe (UC-Davis research team) in collaboration with Dr. Lisa Powell (UIC research team).
- Research design and objective: Difference-in-differences pre-post intervention-comparison site research design to assess changes in the availability of foods and beverages sold at checkout and retailer compliance with the policy one year after policy implementation.
- Methods: Photo-centric food store audits were conducted across 8 types of food stores (e.g., chain supermarkets, independent grocery stores, drug stores) in intervention and comparison sites at baseline (4 weeks pre-implementation) and follow-up (11 months post-implementation).
Resources
- Tools:
- Forthcoming - Store CheckOUt Tool (SCOUT)
- Research Briefs:
- Marinello S, Falbe J, Solar SE, Powell LM. Price Promotions of Foods and Beverages Sold at Food Store Checkouts. Research Brief No. 130. Policy, Practice and Prevention Research Center, University of Illinois Chicago. Chicago, IL. June 2023. doi: 10.25417/uic.24800097
- Powell LM, Li Y, Solar SE, Pipito AA, Wolf EC, Falbe J. Development and Reliability Testing of the Store CheckOUt Tool (SCOUT) for Use in Healthy Checkout Evaluations. Research Brief No. 125. Policy, Practice and Prevention Research Center, University of Illinois Chicago. Chicago, IL. March 2022.
- Journal Articles:
- Falbe J, Marinello S, Wolf, EC, Solar S, Powell, LM. Food Environment After Implementation of a Healthy Checkout Policy. JAMA Network Open.2024 August; 7(8): e2421731-e2421731.
- Marinello S, Powell LM, Falbe J. Neighborhood Sociodemographic Characteristics and Healthfulness of Store Checkouts in Northern California. Prev Med Rep. 2023 October;35:102379. doi: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2023.102379
- Falbe J, Marinello S, Wolf EC, Solar SE, Schermbeck RM, Pipito AA, and Powell LM. Food and beverage environments at store checkouts in California: Mostly unhealthy products. Current Developments in Nutrition. 2023, 7(6):100075. doi: 10.1016/j.cdnut.2023.100075
- Falbe, J., White, J.S., Sigala, D.M., Grummon, A.H., Solar, S.E., Powell, L.M. The Potential for Healthy Checkout Policies to Advance Nutrition Equity. Nutrients. 2021, 13 (11):4181. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13114181