Nutrition Science and Everyday Application - beta v 0.1

412 ALICE CALLAHAN, PHD, HEATHER LEONARD, MED, RDN, AND TAMBERLY POWELL, MS, RDN
Figure 7.22. As of 2018, restaurant chains and some other food vendors are required to list
calorie counts on their menus. Would these make you pause before ordering?
• Increase access to food assistance programs and align them with nutrition
recommendations. For example, in 2009, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
revised the food packages for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program to
better align with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The new packages
emphasized more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy and decreased
the availability of juice. After this change, there was a decrease in the obesity rate
of children in the WIC program. Similar progress may be made by increasing access
to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in order to reduce food
insecurity. Many farmers’ markets now accept SNAP benefits for the purchase of
fresh fruit and vegetables. 3
• Tax sugary drinks, such as soda and sports drinks, which contribute significant
empty calories to the U.S. diet and are associated with childhood obesity. Local
taxes on soda and other sugary drinks are often controversial, and soda
companies lobby to prevent them from passing. However, early research in U.S.
cities with soda taxes show that they do work to decrease soda consumption. 3 In
the U.S., soda has only been taxed at the local level, and the tax has been paid by
consumers. The United Kingdom has taken a different approach: They started
taxing soft drink manufacturers for the sugar content of the products they sell.
Between 2015 and 2018, the average sugar content of soda sold in the U.K.
dropped by 29 percent. 14
Support Greater Physical Activity
Increasing physical activity increases the energy expended during the day. This can help
maintain energy balance, thus preventing weight gain. It may also help to shift a person into
negative energy balance and facilitate weight loss if needed. But simply adding an exercise
session—a run or a trip to the gym, say—often doesn’t shift energy balance (though it’s
certainly good for health). Why? Exercise can increase hunger, and there’s only so many