Pricey Produce and Overweight Kids

MyPyramid for Kids encourages children to eat more fruit and vegetables, but what if the cost of these items is prohibitively high? Research by the RAND Corporation, a California-based think tank, found that the price of fresh produce has a stronger link to weight gain among young children than the proximity of fast-food joints. Children living in areas where fruits and vegetables were relatively more expensive were more likely to gain excess weight than those living in areas where fruit and vegetables cost less.

In Mobile, Alabama, the area with the highest relative price for fruits and vegetables, children gained about 50 % more excess weight than the national average. In Visalia, California, which had the lowest relative cost for produce, the excess weight gain was about half the national average. This would support the widely held belief that low-income families are more sensitive to the price of food.

Presumably if kids are unable to snack on apples and baby carrots, then candy and chips will take their place. But we don’t know if that’s the case, since the RAND study didn’t examine what the children in the group actually ate. Also, in other research, the US Department of Agriculture, which supported the RAND study, found that even low-income families could afford the produce needed to meet the recommended number of servings; but they were twice as likely as high-income families not to buy fresh produce in any given week.