Food and Beverage Environment Analysis and Monitoring System (Food BEAMS)

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This SBIR Phase I Application proposes to test the feasibility of a web-based, user-friendly, innovative, commercially viable assessment system that focuses on measuring changes in the competitive school food and beverage environment: the Food and Beverage Environment Assessment and Monitoring System (Food BEAMS). Food BEAMS will fill a crucial gap in achieving healthy school food environments by enabling government agencies, public health advocates, and school personnel to easily assess competitive school foods and beverages and their adherence to nutrition standards. The system will use an observational data collection methodology to accurately catalogue competitive foods and beverages sold on school campuses, link to a nutrient database of competitive foods and beverages, and assess their adherence to competitive food and beverage standards. Development of the tool will build on the experience of Samuels and Associates in the field of nutrition environment evaluation and policy research as well as the expertise of Altrue Inc. for web-based database software prototyping. Specifically, development of the tool will involve: electronically automating a system for measuring nutritional quality of all competitive foods and beverages sold on school campuses, updating and expanding the competitive school foods nutrient database, and testing the feasibility and reliability of researchers and non-researchers in using the web-based tool. In addition, a number of experts and end users will be employed as part of an Advisory Committee for prototype development and user testing.