Food Prices and Weight Gain During Elementary School

Childhood overweight has increased rapidly over the last two decades. Food supply characteristics, such as relative prices of different types of food, are thought to play an important role in what children eat. The energy density of a diet has been implicated as a cause of obesity and energy-dense foods are cheaper per calorie, which has been suggested as a partial explanation for why the highest rates of obesity continue to be observed among groups of limited economic means.