Building Infrastructure to Document the U.S. Food Stream

Abstract

Asobesityhasgrowninbothprevalenceandseverity in the U.S., there have been increasing calls for both regulatory and voluntary approaches to alter he nation’s food supply so it becomes easier for both chilren and adults to “make the healthy choice.” As pointed ut in the article by Slining et al. in this issue of theAmerian Journal of PreventiveMedicine, the 16 companiesparticpating in the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation HWCF) have pledged to remove 1.5 trillion calories from he marketplace by 2015. The authors of that paper, who ere funded to conduct an independent evaluation of the WCF pledge by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, hould be commended for their meticulous efforts at meauring an exceedingly complex system with limited publially available data. This was no small task, with more than alf a million foods and beverages in the marketplace. The hallenges involved apply to many aspects of research. For xample, a recent study drew on four different sources to btainnutrition informationonproducts advertised to chilren. In addition,much of the needed data are proprietary, nd researchers need to raise funds just to examine data. Through their detailed measurement work, Slining nd colleagues devised crucial crosswalks between releant data sources in an attempt to answer key questions emanded of their evaluation, specifically the extent of alorie reduction and the impact of the changes. Ultiately, as they note in their findings, they may not have ufficient statistical power to detect the impact of the WC on changes in caloric intake. The authors find that