The Center's research on Healthy Foods, Healthy Business considers the opportunities and threats of health issues to the food industry. Opportunities for the food industry include:
- Positive actions that can be taken to become part of the solution, such as introducing “healthier” food options and clearer labeling
- Companies can become strong supporters of programs to increase physical activity among employees, customers, and in schools
- Eating healthier may actually mean people increase their spending on food, as their focus shifts from quantity to quality
- Food companies can help schools redesign their programs to develop lifelong, healthy dietary, and exercise patterns
Meanwhile, threats to the food industry caused by health issues deriving from increasing rates of being overweight and obese. Specific threats include:
- Critics are seeking to blame the food industry for the increases in obesity
- Unhealthy eating is increasing the risk of chronic diseases and adding to healthcare costs for individuals, government, and employers
- Legal experts warn that there are circumstances under which food companies could face a serious threat of litigation
- Increased regulation by the government is possible
- There is a growing perception that school lunch programs contribute to weight gain and to the development of unhealthy dietary patterns
TFIC collaborates with colleagues from around the University, country, and the world on projects that study health issues related to food consumption, food distribution, and the food industry.
RESEARCH IN PROGRESS
Preventing Age-Related Weight Gain in Midlife Women
The goal of this inter-disciplinary study between The Food Industry Center and the Department of Food Science and Nutrition is to determine whether an intervention protocol tailored to "need states" can help midlife women avoid age-related weight gain. An initial descriptive research phase, involving a quantitative segmentation study, will describe the range of "need states" as defined by individuals in situational contexts and surrounded by specific eating occasions. The project is looking to improve understanding of the behaviorial and environmental factors that influence obesity and developing effective intervention strategies for preventing obesity in midlife women. The project's method is novel because it tests the effectiveness of a tailored intervention based on the segmentation of eating occasions, an approach which is expected to have a strong link to eating behavior change, but has not yet been tested.
COMPLETED RESEARCH
Project on Improving the Quality and Nutrition of School Lunch
Former Center Co-Director, Ben Senauer, was a contributing researcher on the recently completed Hopkins (MN) School Lunch Program study. The school has gained regional and national attention for its innovative approach to improving the quality of school lunches. Under a new Food Service Director, and with the support of the Superintendent and School Board, the school lunch program was transformed to provide healthy food choices that became very popular with the students. The goals were to provide nutritionally-sound meals, run the program on a sound business basis, and teach life-long healthy eating habits. An evaluation of the Hopkins Program was conducted with support from the McKnight Foundation and Cargill Corporation with the ultimate objective to determine whether the Hopkins program could serve as a template or model for other schools to improve their lunch programs. The following publications were published from this study
- Analyzing Health Innovations in a School Lunch Program
Working Paper 05-02, Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy, University of Minnesota, 2005.
- An empirical analysis of and policy recommendations to improve the nutritional quality of school meals
Review of Agricultural Economics, v.29, no.4, Winter 2007, pp.672-688, 2007.
- Nutritional improvements and student food choices in a school lunch program
Journal of Consumer Affairs, v.41, no.2, Winter 2007, pp.265-284. 2007.
Study of Women’s Energy Balance and their Food Attitudes and Needs
The Women's Energy Balance study is the precursor study to the Center's current Age-Related Weight Gain study. The National Institute of Health (NIH) funded a research study to predict energy balance between calories eaten and calories used for women based on their attitudes toward food and the needs they have surrounding their eating occasions. The analysis segmented women based on their attitudes and needs and then determined how they related to their energy balance. The "need states" information was collected by ethnigraphic (Think Aloud) interviews in which subjects were interviewed in their homes while preparing meals and in restaurants while eating. The study reflected an integration of consumer research and clinical research and is considered a novel approach by NIH that could result in highly actionable weight intervention programs.
Recommendations for Major Nutrition Program Changes
Under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, referred to as WIC, some eight million low-income mothers, and their infants and young children, receive vouchers for specific food products to improve their nutrition and health. The over $5 billion spent on the program annually has been shown to reduce health care costs by considerably more than that amount. Jean Kinsey, the Center’s Director, served on a panel created by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of The National Academies, that after careful investigation, recommended major nutritional changes in the foods that could be obtained with WIC vouchers. The panel recommended the addition of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, which had not previously been covered by the program, a broader group of foods rich in calcium, such as yogurt and fortified soy beverages, and added whole grains. A copy of the report and recommendations can be found on the Institute of Medicine's website.
Urban Access to Healthy Food
The Food Industry Center joined the Economic Research Service of the USDA in a cooperative agreement to study whether urban dwellers in poor and/or ethnically dense neighborhoods have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Preliminary results show that the poor households spend an equivalent portion of their food budget on fresh fruits and vegetables as middle and upper income households. A thorough review of previous studies related to urban food access was also completed and is under review for publication.
Do Eating Patterns Follow a Cohort or Change Over a Lifetime? Answers Emerging from the Literature
In 2007, The Food Industry Center published a literature review on what is known about changes in nutritional intake and food consumption patterns that are associated with generational cohorts and with the aging process in the U.S. population. With the rapidly increasing American elderly population, food companies, healthcare workers, and policy makers alike are asking whether the dietary habits and food consumption patterns of this growing segment of the U.S. population will follow those of current and past elderly people or whether their cohort will eat like they did when they were younger. Findings are published in TFIC Working Paper 2007-01.
Additional TFIC research on food and health topics can also be found in our Working Paper Series or in our Event Summary publications.
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