Policy Recommendations to Help Consumers Make Healthy Choices

Walk into any store today, and you will be bombarded with advertisements for food of varying nutritional quality, turning the simple task of making healthy choices into a daunting challenge. Julia Wolfson, an associate professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health Policy and Management, and her colleagues at the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Healthy Eating Research, are hoping to make this choice a little easier for consumers in America.

In January 2023, with support from the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, Wolfson and her colleagues convened food and beverage retailers and manufacturers, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participants, and public health researchers to develop policy recommendations to support healthy food retail and healthy food marketing in stores and online. Their conversations focused primarily on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and what changes could be made to help consumers make healthy choices in the next iteration of the Farm Bill, a package of agriculture and nutrition legislation passed by Congress roughly every five years.

Following their convening, Wolfson and her colleagues put together a report outlining ten policy recommendations for the next Farm Bill and beyond. Each of these recommendations falls into one of six categories:

1. SNAP-authorized retailer requirements
2. Research pilots
3. Grant programs
4. Nutrition education
5. Voluntary rules
6. Recognition programs

Their recommendations include calls for stronger retailer stocking standards to better align with dietary guidelines, research into marketing interventions to encourage healthy choices, healthy marketing grant programs for retailers, and more. If adopted, these recommendations could help the one in eight Americans who benefit from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program make healthier choices and improve their quality of life in the long run.

The report was published in November 2023, and the researchers held a webinar conference in December 2023 to highlight recommendations made in the report.