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Food & Beverage Environmental Assessment Tool & Surveillance System

An environmental scan of UC Davis food and beverage environments and evaluation for future food/beverage for future policies and initiatives.

Introduction:

Abundant research shows that food environments (e.g., availability of healthy options) exert a powerful influence over what individuals eat and drink, and therefore their health status. At UC Davis, there is an unmet need for metrics on the food and beverage environments on campus. We have developed the Food and Beverage Environmental Assessment Tool (FAB EAT) to address this unmet need. Continued use of the tool will enable us to evaluate food/beverage initiatives and understand if the campus food environment is moving in the right direction as a whole. Importantly, it will provide data to identify the most promising policies for promoting healthy food and beverage choices—a key component of Healthy UCD’s mission and strategic priorities.


Outcomes:

Outcomes of this project include the development of a rigorous tool and system for collecting and coding data on beverage availability and placement, food/beverage advertising, and food/beverage availability at check-out areas and catering menus. This project will generate a dataset and report for the Healthy UC Davis Committee.


Opportunities for Involvement:

No opportunities available at this time.


Recent Milestones:

The Food and Beverage Assessment Tool team developed a rigorous tool and system for collecting and coding data on food/beverage availability, placement, and advertising, in campus eateries and stores, check-out areas and catering menus. The system uses photography; a Google-based survey tool; and observational audits of eateries, stores, vending machines, and other key campus locations. In addition, undergraduate research assistants were trained to begin data mapping and collection, having mapped 86% of the 161 buildings included in the data collection list to date. Advertisement and other data collected during Fall Quarter are being cleaned, and noted errors have been corrected. During Spring Quarter 2020, they plan to complete data collection, conduct nutritional analysis using the Nutrition Data System for Research program, and clean and analyze the collected data to create a finalized data set.


Project Leads: 

Dr. Jennifer Falbe, ScD
Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Human Development
Human Ecology
jfalbe@ucdavis.edu

Sarah Solar
Falbe Lab Manager
Human Ecology
sesolar@ucdavis.edu

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