Larger retail stores in unincorporated parts of Contra Costa County will soon be required to stock healthy food and beverages in checkout aisles following a vote this week by the county Board of Supervisors.
The board voted unanimously Tuesday to give initial approval to an ordinance that will require retail stores of more than 2,000 square feet to stock only healthy items in checkout areas and within 3 feet of a register. The proposal will return to the board on Oct. 7 for final approval. Once the ordinance is adopted, the first year of implementation will not have any penalties, and county environmental health staff will provide nutrition education and other resources to the 40-plus retailers affected in the unincorporated areas of the county. After that first year, the county could enforce the ordinance with fines or other penalties. Stores in incorporated cities will not be affected.
The proposal defines healthy foods as those with no more than 5 grams of added sugar and no more than 200 milligrams of sodium per serving, gums and mints with no added sugars, and beverages with no added sugar and no artificial sweetener. Advocates said Contra Costa could be the first county in the U.S. to adopt a healthy checkout ordinance.
“There are enough healthy snacks in most grocery stores that it shouldn’t be that difficult to do,” board chair Candace Andersen said at the meeting. A presentation to the supervisors by county staff noted the importance of access to healthy foods, particularly in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, and said nearly 30% of the county’s adolescents between 12-17 years old are considered overweight or obese. Supervisor Shanelle Scales-Preston said in the district she represents, many people are “either getting fast food or they’re using a smaller market because they may not have a major grocery store to have fresh fruit and vegetables.”
During public comment on the item, most commenters expressed support for the ordinance, though Leigh Martin, policy analyst with the California Fuels & Convenience Alliance representing convenience stores and other small retailers, said the proposal could create “unworkable requirements” for those types of stores. “Nearly the entire store could be considered checkout areas,” Martin said. Supervisors said the ordinance was the result of years of outreach and engagement with retail store owners and that the 2,000-square-foot minimum meant most convenience stores would not be affected. “Merchants are smart, they’ll figure this out,” Supervisor John Gioia said.
When are they going to stop telling us how to parent & how to feed our children? But yet schools can tell our children if they are really a boy or girl & help to redirect them without parents knowing? Only in California!!
Yeah that is solving the problem!
Will the government post an armed guard at each checkout stand that will make sure that people buy those healthy foods? What about all the junk food that might already be in a persons shopping cart???
Here’s another example of feckless mommy democrat government.
It’s a good thing that our state education system is in superb condition, that crime is almost non existent, that big corporations are not leaving the state in droves, that all the taxes we endlessly pay are so so low….
The “doctor” supervisors are probably too ignorant to be able to tell you what the two branches of the autonomic nervous system are and what they do to determine your health. What a pretentious bunch they are.
“checkout areas and within 3 feet of a register”
What I refer to as Impulse Alley.
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High profit items bought by people who blow their monthly budgets.
Fry’s had one about 40 foot long, called them out for having hunting
knives in blister packs in that isle. Just what a shallow thinking,
impulsive criminal would need.
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story, Standing in fry’s impulse alley observed maybe an 18 year old kid
wearing a suit, kept opening a digital lock safe and grabbing large
stacks of bills. Done with checkout, called him over to counter and told
him combination of safe he’d been opening, thought the poor kid was
gonna faint. Suggested he shield keypad and what he takes out of the
safe from customers.
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People are FUN to watch . . . .
There is nothing good about this ordinance and the glowing pride exhibited by the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors due to the passage of this “Healthy Snacks Only Ordinance” is disgusting!!! The retail grocery business is an extremely low profit margin business. Contra Costa County isn’t going to cover the costs of retailers when these “healthy snacks” don’t sell and are disposed of due to being out of date, and these Supervisors will be the first to loudly complain when retail grocery stores close and demand that they remain open and operate at a loss. The members of the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors should first invest their own money into retail grocery stores in unincorporated areas of the county and show us all how easy it is to make a profit by selling these items that people don’t want, if they really wanted these items they’d already be purchasing them. What’s next from these Supervisors, are they also going to tell these retail grocery stores how much they have to sell these “healthy” items for, so that they’re “affordable,” “particularly in low-income areas and in communities of color.” Supervisors, stay out of our lives and businesses!!! Supervisor Ken Carlson needs to go, hopefully he’ll be voted out of office soon!!!
Another reason we need TERM LIMITS.
I work in a kitchen at one of our elem schools and I cannot tell you how much “healthy” fruits and vegetables get tossed every day. We are required to MAKE them take 1 fruit or Veggie with lunch and 1 fruit with breakfast. I just tell the children, You don’t have to eat it but you have to have it on your tray when you come thru the line. If we are serving any kind of a treat with lunch, The children will come thru , Get a lunch and eat the treat and throw the rest of the lunch away. When I say treat, I don’t mean cookies or candy but chips or even graham crackers.
It’s disgusting the amount of waste. I have had children cry or throw a temper tantrum because I HAD to make them go back and get a fruit or veggie. It makes me feel terrible but with the Govt. running our lives, It’s what we have to do.
The kicker is that most of the kids in Title 1 CCC schools are getting those lunches for free.
Sounds like the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors has nothing better to do than micro-manage product placement in grocery stores. In that case, they need to be fired, and we elect new Supervisors who have the courage to face the real challenges in Contra Costa and make the changes that truly solve problems in our communities.
Unfortunately, it’s never gonna happen!
As long as people cannot use their food stamps to buy snacks like this, then I do not care who buys it. Just buy it yourself on your own dime and you should be able to buy whatever you want. People are going to do what they want to do. The people buying this? You are not going to change their minds, ever.
%50 of the entire SNAP and foodstamp budget for the whole country is spent on soda.The welfare machine creates and maintains multi billion dollar corporations.Almost every kid i see is overweight and they dont care or even understand the health problems ahead as their parents tell them to have a second plate.
whenwilltheylearn,
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Research and studies have found that SNAP benefits significantly contributes to poor health among American SNAP recipients. SNAP benefit recipients have been found to consume more sweetened beverages than low-income Americans not receiving SNAP benefits, and well-off Americans. Sweetened drinks makeup about 10% of SNAP purchases, soda pop makes up about 5% of SNAP purchases, while sports and energy drinks, and fruit flavored drinks makeup about 5% of other SNAP purchases.
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I wrote a paper in college about 35 years ago on how easy it would be to require food stamp recipients to only be able to purchase healthier foods and drinks by limiting what could be purchased with food stamps, much like the requirements to purchase certain items for WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) benefit recipients. It was and is a simple fix, but Congress lacks the will to fix the problems that previous Congresses have created. Although, just requiring food stamp, now SNAP, benefit recipients to purchase healthier foods and drinks doesn’t necessarily mean they’d consume those healthier foods and drinks. I remember when families receiving “government cheese” would barter and trade their “government cheese” with neighbors for other food and drink items.
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During the later years of the Biden Administration about a dozen state legislatures from Republican controlled states were considering requesting waivers from the Department of Agriculture so that they could restrict the purchase of high fat, high sodium, and high sugar foods and drinks with SNAP benefits.
This is like telling people what they should or shouldn’t watch on TV. Forcing vendors to sell what YOU want is coercion. Typically what’s in front are items that are impulse buys. I’ve seen bananas at the counter in some places, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they sell well. I think vendors should be allowed to choose what they sell in their stores, and where they place items for sale in their stores. If you don’t like the placement or what they sell, don’t shop there.
My family operated 7-11 stores, 2 in Pleasant Hill and 1 in Berkeley. We had the “food coupons” in books in the 70s. It was severely abused in that people would buy penny candy with a $1 note and get 99 cents change to buy cigarettes and later gas at other (Shortstop / Food& Deli, Liquor etc) I worked at. The big (enforced by retailers because violation penalties were severe from the USDA) rule was, no hot or microwaved food and nothing that had sales tax added to it. It was simple. No soda pop, no beer, no wine duh. I knew we lost the state when they could buy soda on the EBT. That was the brake fail on the runaway rollercoaster train.