1. What intervention strategies seem most promising to reduce food insecurity and obesity? What are the key target populations and why?

    • In the reauthorization of the Farm Bill, deemphasize corn, soy, and wheat and emphasize fruits and vegetables.

    • Reform nutrition education to have a more hands-on approach, as in home economics classes.

    • Reconsider inconsistent U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) policy (for example, USDA recommends limiting fats but also helped Dominos to reformulate pizza with twice as much cheese).

    • Create a more healthful school foods environment (for example, by removing vending machines and providing more healthful foods at parties).

    • Monitor the proximity of food vendors and the quality of food available near schools.

    • Promote and support farmers’ markets.

    • Reduce marketing to children.

    • Focus interventions on specific subpopulations, including minority women, groups with the lowest incomes, rural populations, and areas of concentrated urban poverty.

    • Tailor approaches to the specific geographic, cultural, and economic context.

    • Provide point-of-contact interventions—a “one stop shop” for all programs.

    • Conduct more public education on assistance programs and benefits, and address stigma and fears.

    • Partner with rather than “target” populations.

    • Identify and address food deserts and/or unhealthful food swamps, and increase access to healthful foods.

    • Include the food industry in interventions.

    • Reduce poverty through income transfers (such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP]), community-based prevention funds, and other measures.

    • Take a comprehensive community-based approach that includes more than food in the solution.

  1. How can we better elucidate the mechanisms underpinning the relationship between food insecurity and obesity?

    • Study the mechanisms that influence food choice, such as taste, cost, convenience, how filling a food is, and how people socialize over certain foods.

    • Ascertain why people make obesogenic food choices.

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