• In 2020, CSPI successfully sued the USDA in federal district court to challenge the agency’s 2018 rollbacks of school meal nutrition standards on sodium, whole grains, and flavored milk.
• Strengthened SNAP during the Biden administration by successfully advocating for increases in the maximum benefit in response to the pandemic-induced hunger crisis and updates to the Thrifty Food Plan to better reflect the cost of a nutritious diet, resulting in 42 million Americans having better access to nutritious food. Unfortunately, in July 2025, the Trump administration reversed these provisions in part and made further cuts to SNAP access and benefits.  
• Built support for national free school meals for all children during the pandemic which Congress authorized in March 2020, but it regrettably ended in 2022. With our support, nine states subsequently passed and implemented healthy free school meals for all policies.

Corporations have an outsized influence on individuals’ ability to access and consume healthy foods, but corporate power should never come at the expense of public health. CSPI held industry accountable through strategic campaigns leveraging evidence and public pressure, including:    

• In 2025, forced five companies, including Coca-Cola and Nestle, to remove ads from YouTube Kids by alerting the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) that these ads violated voluntary pledges to not advertise food to kids.
• Blocked the mega-merger of Kroger and Albertsons supermarket chains in 2024. The $25 billion consolidation would have placed more than half of all foods and beverages in the US under the control of two retailers, increased food prices, and depressed employee wages. CSPI met with the Federal Trade Commission to share our concerns and brought the firepower of the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity (NANA) members to support the Stop the Merger coalition.
• After an online campaign that generated over 4,000 consumer emails in 2025, Stonyfield Organic agreed to remove all added sugars from the YoBaby yogurt line.

Additional work

• Dollar Store Report (2023)
• Online Grocery Marketing Scorecard Report (2025)  
• Restaurant Kids’ Meals Campaign (2024)
• School Meals Corporate Report Card (2021)
• School Meals Milk Report (2022)
• Competitive Foods in Schools Report (2023)

CSPI’s success has been shaped and strengthened through deep partnerships with state and local organizations through subgrants and capacity building efforts. Through CSPI’s subgranting program, $8.26 million was disbursed to community-based organizations working on community-centered policy campaigns, and CSPI provided technical assistance. This approach to partnership evolved as CSPI learned alongside our subgrant partners and placed a greater emphasis on building capacity and examining policies through a health equity lens. This work was influenced by the contextual realities of the time – the first Trump administration, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a national racial reckoning.

In our experience, policies that are responsive to communities’ needs and that have authentic community support are more equitable, better positioned to resist industry opposition, and ultimately lead to better health outcomes. In the first round of subgranting (2020-2022), only 11 percent of subgrantee organizations were led by individuals identifying as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). CSPI committed to improving this, and in subsequent rounds (2023-2035) over 40 percent of subgrantee organizations identified as such. In addition to the subgrants, CSPI facilitated the following capacity building opportunities:

• Over 150 trainings, presentations, and panels through the Resource Hub — a responsive space for learning and innovation for both grantees and external partners.
• The development and dissemination of eight toolkits to support policy advocacy.
• Three convenings for subgrant partners to develop skills and engage in peer learning and networking. Read more about a subgrantee’s insights from the 2025 convening here.
• Inaugural Powerbuiding cohort: Dedicated funding to build the advocacy capacity of organizations led by and serving people with racialized and/or minoritized identities—through technical assistance and space for peer organizations to connect and learn in community, from community.
• Led advocacy efforts through 50 coalitions including the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity Coalition – with over 520 national, state, and local partners working on shared goals.

The continuing growth and inter-campaign synergies between CSPI-funded work in New York State has allowed for more effective legislative and community engagement at all levels.

— Interfaith Public Health Network

Formative research is often critical to informing advocacy, especially when trying to pass novel policies. To this end, CSPI co-authored 30 studies to inform policy advocacy campaigns. Additionally, we partnered with researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) to evaluate policies passed to understand their impact and inform future policy advocacy strategy. Highlights include:  

• Formative research provided the evidence to inform recommendations for FDA’s proposed FOPNL rule. CSPI initiated and guided nine academic studies to directly compare FDA’s proposed “Nutrition Info box” with a novel “high in” label design and found the “high in” design is far more effective.
• An evaluation of the Healthy Retail Checkout Ordinance in Berkeley, California found that this policy resulted in an increase in compliant, healthier products in checkout facings.
• An evaluation of changes to nutrition standards in the CFBAI showed that children’s exposure to food advertising on television fell substantially from 2013 to 2022.  However, both children and adolescents continued to see over 1,000 food-related ads per year, and the majority of advertised products remained high in added sugars, saturated fat or sodium. Evidence suggested that companies are targeting youth via digital media, which UIC is currently studying further. The results of this study will lay the groundwork for future regulations.