Pandemic-Induced Changes in Food Acquisitions: Implications for Child Diet Quality in the United States

We estimate how the COVID-19 pandemic altered school-aged children's diet quality from March 2020 to July 2022 through the lens of food acquisitions. Because nationally representative food-consumption data are absent during this time, we use several data sources to predict changes in diet quality. We first estimate a model of diet quality as a function of food source acquisitions using prepandemic food-consumption surveys. These estimates are applied to observed changes in monthly acquisitions across five food sources: grocery, fast food, restaurant, school, and other sources. Although we predict the average school-aged child experienced a loss in daily diet quality by 2%-3% on a typical school day, results are largely driven by those receiving free or reduced-price school meals. Specifically, students in the full-price category maintained comparable diet quality from March 2020 to July 2022, deviating no more than 1% from prepandemic levels. Students typically receiving free/reduced-price meals, however, had lower-quality diets by at least 3% during each school month, upwards of 5.5%. The lower bound prediction is driven by the reduced consumption of school meals, whereas the upper bound is driven by the degree to which schools opted to relax the nutritional standards for school meals due to COVID-19 federal waivers. Results highlight the important effects of school meal programs on diet quality, especially for children from lower-income households.