# Effect of an integrated nutrition-math curriculum to improve food-purchasing behavior of children

> **NIH NIH R01** · COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2022 · $616,403

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Project Title: Effect of an integrated nutrition-math curriculum to improve food-purchasing behavior of children.
Data show that nearly 25% of children aged four to eight years consumed fast food on a typical day. These
trends in fast food consumption are more acute among low-income urban dwellers where higher rates of
overweight and childhood obesity are seen. This has led to a focus on providing fast food consumers with
point-of-purchase nutrition information, such as the calorie posting mandates, in the hopes that these decision
cues will help consumers make better informed dietary decisions. These efforts began in New York City in
2008 and spread to California by 2009 before being finally incorporated into federal law. But even prior to the
federal roll out, local studies regarding their influence on purchasing behavior were conflicting. Moreover,
studies revealed an even lower yield on behavior among low-income obesogenic populations. Barriers to the
use of calorie postings not only include economic, affective and behavioral dimensions but also cognitive
dimensions related to low literacy and poor numerical skills, especially among low literacy populations and the
youth. Indeed studies evaluating the effect of calorie postings on parental purchases for children found no
difference before and after calorie-posting legislation despite parents noticing the calorie postings. Most
children chose their own meals at the point-of-purchase, and continued to choose the same items before and
after legislation. It is clear that additional strategies are needed to encourage the point-of-purchase use of
calorie postings, however available studies provide little insight into best practices or the types of approaches
needed. It is with this in mind that we developed a school-based approach to improve point-of-purchase use of
calorie postings, by creating a novel intervention that targets menu board calorie literacy as a means of
improving food-purchasing behaviors. We have named this program, “Hip Hop HEALS” (Healthy Eating And
Living in Schools; HHH). HHH is a novel behaviorally focused multimedia, musical school health rap toolkit
that targets what we refer to as menu board calorie literacy. We have integrated 4th grade common core math
standards into our HHH program in a manner that incorporates evidence-based nutrition education
recommendations by the Institute of Medicine and the CDC. We propose to test the efficacy of our integrative
approach on food purchasing behaviors of children in an adequately powered, controlled trial. We will test the
intervention in the after-school setting among economically disadvantaged children and incorporate parental
engagement in our outcome evaluations. We have partnered with New York City's largest after-school program
vendor, Sports and Arts in Schools foundation, for the implementation of this study. After-school sites will be
randomly assigned to either the intervention arm or a wait-list control.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10442749
- **Project number:** 5R01NR017571-05
- **Recipient organization:** COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** Olajide Williams
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $616,403
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-24 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10442749

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10442749, Effect of an integrated nutrition-math curriculum to improve food-purchasing behavior of children (5R01NR017571-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-10 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10442749. Licensed CC0.

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