Youth Development

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This Thanksgiving could be our biggest family and friend get together in a long time, with some projecting a 13% increase in holiday travel compared to 2020. To protect yourself and your family from COVID-19, see CDC's Safer Ways to Celebrate Holidays.

Thanksgiving can be a time of celebration, gratitude and sharing.

Current recommendations encourage caregivers of young children to delay the introduction of sugar-sweetened beveragesbeverages with added sugars such as soda, sweetened fruit drinks like lemonade, sweetened teas, and sports drinksuntil after the child turns two-years old.

School meals are the healthiest lunch option for most students, and national efforts are underway to support improved school meal participation and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables offered in school meals.

Schools are an ideal setting to improve child nutrition and food security and are critical environments in which to implement policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) public health interventions.

Parents play an important role in influencing what their kids eat and drink.

Nutrition Policy Institute researchers evaluated parent perception of neighborhood produce availability in a large study of over 5000 children between the ages of 4-15 years in more than 130 communities across the US.

Nutrition Policy Institute policy advisor Christina Hecht presented virtually at the 2021 Child and Adult Care Food Program conference.

The Nutrition Policy Institute welcomed Erin Esaryk to the team on August 9, 2021 as a research data analyst. Esaryk graduated in May 2020 from UC Berkeley with a master in public health. She also works at UC San Francisco with Sheri Weiser on projects related to food insecurity and health outcomes.