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Background: Food security and nutrition equity, 2 social determinants of health, are impacted by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the racialization of urban communities. Few studies to date have examined how the use of social infrastructures in the United States during COVID-19 affected the ability to achieve food security and nutrition equity., Objectives: To describe how the use of social infrastructures impacts food security and nutrition equity in a majority Black and urban community in the United States., Methods: Semistructured in-depth interviews were conducted with 40 low-income, urban, and predominately Black people living in Buffalo, New York in May-July 2022.A thematic analysis using a phronetic iterative approach informed by the Social Ecological Model, Walsh's Family Resilience Framework, and a framework focused on the advancement of nutrition equity., Results: We identified 9 themes mapped across 3 interrelated domains that impact nutrition equity, including 1 ) meeting food needs with dignity, 2 ) supply and demand for fresh and healthy foods, and 3 ) community empowerment and food sovereignty. We found that people used coping strategies, such as food budgeting and cooking skills, paired with different social infrastructures to meet food needs. People commonly used the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and food pantries to meet food needs over receiving support from family members or friends outside of the household. Poverty, challenges accessing and affording healthy food, and the inability to reciprocate support to others undermined the advancement of nutrition equity despite social infrastructures being available for use. Historical and ongoing acts of disempowerment and disinvestment also hindered the advancement of nutrition equity., Conclusions: Sustained, community-led investment is needed to address structural inequities preventing the advancement of nutrition equity. Social infrastructures should be expanded to inclusively support low-income populations, so wealth generation is possible to address the root cause of food insecurity., (© 2024 The Author(s).)

The US federal menu labeling law, implemented on May 7 th 2018, required that restaurant chains post calorie counts on menu items. The purpose of this study was to analyze the change in public sentiment, using Twitter data, regarding eight restaurant chains before and after the calorie labeling law's implementation. Twitter data was mined from Twitter's application programming interface (API) for this study from the calendar year 2018; 2016 and was collected as a control. We selected restaurant chains that had a range of compliance dates with the law. Tweets about each chain were filtered by brand-specific keywords, and Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner (VADER) sentiment analysis was applied to receive a continuous compound score (-1-1) of how positive (1) or negative (-1) each tweet was. Controlled Interrupted Time Series (CITS) was performed with Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Regression on 2018 and 2016 series of compound scores for each brand, and level and trend changes were calculated. Most restaurant chains that implemented the federal menu calorie labeling law experienced no change or a small change in level or trend in sentiment after they implemented labeling. Chains experienced mildly more negative sentiment right after the law was implemented, with attenuation of this effect over time. Calorie labeling did not have a strong effect on the public's perception of food brands over the long-term on Twitter and may imply the need for greater efforts to change the sentiment towards unhealthy restaurant chains., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2023 The Authors.)

•Integration across public benefit programs could streamline access to services.•Modernized technology and shared missions among agencies promote integration.•Limited financial resources and insufficient guidance hinder integration.•State agencies view integration as a way to create human-centered experiences.•Additional resources from federal agencies could help establish greater integration., Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: All authors (GH, AR, SAW, CE, HS, SNB, and AJM) have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. The views expressed in this paper by SNB are solely the personal views of the author., (© 2022 The Authors.)

Several U.S. jurisdictions have adopted policies requiring healthy beverage defaults on children's menus, but it is unknown whether such policies or restrictions leads to fewer calories ordered. We recruited 479 caregivers of children for an online choice experiment and instructed participants to order dinner for their youngest child (2-6 years) from two restaurant menus. Participants were randomly assigned to one type of menu: 1) standard beverages on children's menus ( Control ; n = 155); 2) healthy beverages on children's menus (water, milk, or 100% juice), with unhealthy beverages available as substitutions ( Default ; n = 162); or 3) healthy beverages on children's menus, with no unhealthy beverage substitutions ( Restriction ; n = 162). We used linear regression with bootstrapping to examine differences between conditions in calories ordered from beverages. Secondary outcomes included percent of participants ordering unhealthy beverages (full-calorie soda, diet soda, and/or sugar-sweetened fruit drinks) and calories from unhealthy beverages. Calories ordered from beverages did not differ across conditions at Chili's [ Default : 97.6 (SD = 69.8); p = 0.82; Restriction : 102.7 (SD = 71.5); p = 0.99; Control : 99.4 (SD = 72.7)] or McDonald's [ Default : 90.2 (SD = 89.1); p = 0.55; Restriction : 89.0 (SD = 81.0); p = 0.94; Control : 96.5 (SD = 95.2)]. There were no differences in the percent of orders or calories ordered from unhealthy beverages. Though Restriction participants ordered fewer calories from full-calorie soda [(3.0 (SD = 21.6)] relative to Control participants [13.4 (SD = 52.1); p = 0.04)] at Chili's, we observed no such difference between Default and Control participants, or across McDonald's conditions. Overall, there was no effect of healthy default beverages or restrictions in reducing total calories ordered from unhealthy beverages for children in our experiment., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2020 Published by Elsevier Inc.)