Evaluating a Healthy Restaurant Kids Meals Policy

Summary

More than a dozen municipalities have passed healthy default kids' beverage policies. These policies seek to reduce child consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) by requiring that restaurants serve only healthy beverages (e.g., water, milk, or 100% juice) instead of SSBs as the default choice with children's meals in restaurants. These policies have potential to meaningfully reduce child SSB consumption. However, there are significant gaps in our knowledge of the effects of healthy default beverage policies on children's health. This study uses a natural experiment to evaluate the effects of a healthy default beverage policy in two U.S. cities, New York City and Philadelphia, on children's fast-food restaurant meal orders and dietary intake. The primary hypothesis is that the policy will reduce children's SSB purchases and consumption, reduce children's total caloric intake, and improve diet quality at the fast-food restaurant meal and on the day of the restaurant meal.

Conditions

• Diet Habit

Interventions

OTHER

Healthy Default Kids' Beverage Policy

The healthy default kids' beverage policy requires that all restaurants serve only healthy beverages (water, milk, or 100% juice) instead of sugary beverages as the default beverage with children's meals. The policy has been enacted in New York City and Philadelphia and will go into effect in April 2020.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Pennsylvania

  collaborator OTHER

• Harvard Pilgrim Health Care

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Minnesota

  collaborator OTHER

• RTI International

  collaborator OTHER

• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

  collaborator NIH

• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Alyssa Moran, ScD · Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

• Angie Cradock, ScD · Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-10-13

Primary Completion

2022-07-18

Completion

2022-07-18

Countries

• United States

Study Locations