Healthy Food America

Moving Science to Action Fighting back against processed foods that make us sick and improving access to healthy food! Healthy Food America acts on scientific evidence to drive change in food policy and industry practice, to give Americans greater control over their health and reduce diet-related illnesses, such as diabetes, heart and liver disease, dental decay and obesity. We are helping energize a national movement for healthier food, starting with a major campaign to reduce consumption of added sugars in food and beverage products.Mounting scientific evidence shows that added sugar harms the body and can lead to chronic disease. Since 2015 we have offered technical assistance to numerous cities and counties and a growing number of states that are working to adopt policies to reduce the amount of added sugar in food and beverages. Because sugary drinks -- soda, energy and sports drinks, etc -- account for more than half of added sugar Americans consume, we have focused our efforts there. Research and experience show that raising individual awareness is nowhere near sufficient to curb sugar in the face of an industry whose marketing and lobbying practices have permeated our culture and political sphere. As one strategy to counter that and raise a generation of empowered skeptics, we are building a program to educate and activate youth around sugary drinks and industry efforts to push them onto children, teens and young adults, particularly those of color. Evidence to date also shows taxing sugary drinks -- just as we tax tobacco -- to be one of the most promising strategies for bringing sugar down to healthier levels. Sugary drink taxes help communities raise revenue for health and education, particularly for vulnerable populations, while encouraging people to shift away from unhealthy drinks, an underlying cause of diabetes and other illness that affects those populations disproportionately. In 2016, HFA played a key role in helping six cities adopt sugary drinks taxes, growing the U.S. total from one to seven places pursuing that health-promoting policy. The organization has continued to offer technical assistance and education on these and other strategies. That technical assistance takes many forms:HFA tracks and monitors policy adoption and effectiveness, as well as beverage industry tactics, counterarguments and marketing. We also track and translate emerging science around sugar and health, as well as the evolving state of knowledge of the effectiveness of policies and strategies to curb sugar. HFA has developed best practices guides to designing taxes and communicating about them. We also have collaborated with other organizations to deploy and customize models so that jurisdictions can calculate potential revenue and evaluate the potential health benefits and savings from a tax. HFA's web site is a key source of actionable resources for the sugar reduction movement, including toolkits for sugar advocacy and menus of effective policies.