Jacob Zychick of American Heart Association supports Intro 405 with milk concerns
Jacob Zychick of the American Heart Association supports Intro 405, citing high childhood obesity and low fruit and vegetable consumption in New York City. He says the bill would require a non-juice fruit serving, a non-deep-fried vegetable serving, smaller juice portions, and nutrition standards, but AHA has concerns that including whole and flavored milk would weaken current beverage defaults.
Dear Council, I apologize.
Dear Chair Shulman and members of the City Council Committee on Health, on behalf of the American Heart Association, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on Intro 0405, which would establish healthy nutrition standards for children's meals sold at chain restaurants in New York City.
Childhood obesity in the United States remains high, and recent findings show that nearly 40% of New York City public school children in grades K-8 are overweight or obese, with higher percentages in Harlem, Central Brooklyn, and the South Bronx.
Unfortunately, less than one in five New York City children aged 5 to 13 consume the recommended fruit and vegetable servings per day.
The American Heart Association has worked closely with Intro 05 sponsor Councilmember Kevin Riley and community stakeholders to amend the current law.
This current legislation would ensure that children's meals sold at chain restaurants in New York City provide at least one non-juice fruit serving, one serving of non-deep-fried vegetables, and reduce the serving size for juice.
In addition, this law would set nutritional standards for calories, sodium, and saturated fat.
These are important and impactful additions that strengthen New York City's current children's meal law and the American...
American Heart Association is supportive of them.
In 2019, the New York City Council took an important step to ensure healthier beverage default options for children meals.
A key component of that policy was excluding whole milk as a default beverage option.
The American Heart Association does have concerns with whole milk and flavor milk being included in this current version of the legislation.
As we believe it would weaken the current beverage default standard.
And on behalf of the American Heart Association, I just really want to thank Chair Shulman and all the community stakeholders in the Committee on Health for the opportunity to testify today.
The American Heart Association looks forward to continuing to work with everyone to improve cardiovascular health for all and looks forward to supporting Intro 045, which would set nutritional standards for children's meals sold in the city.
In addition, we will be submitting testimony on the tobacco bars bill that we have many of the concerns of our community partners and also the American Cancer Society Action Network.
And thank you so much for your time.
Thank you very much.
Really appreciate it.
And we look forward to seeing your testimony.
And, you know, I've worked with both of your organizations and, you know, you do great work.
So thank you.