Abstract
Purpose.
Describe and evaluate a media campaign to encourage 1% or nonfat milk consumption.
Design.
Uncontrolled pre/post test.
Setting.
One largely rural (Santa Paula) and one urban (East Los Angeles) California community.
Subjects.
Community residents and milk vendors in primarily low-income Latino/Hispanic communities.
Intervention.
The “1% or Less” milk campaign, which promotes substitution of 2% fat or whole milk with 1% or less fat milk was adapted and implemented.
Measures.
Comparison of post-campaign milk sales with pre-campaign sales.
Analysis.
Chi-square tests of independence used to compare precampaign and postcampaign sales.
Results.
There were decreases in the proportion of whole milk sold and increases in the proportion of reduced-fat, low-fat, and nonfat milk sold in the weeks following each campaign (Santa Paula: p = .0165; East Los Angeles: p < .0001). However, follow-up data from East Los Angeles suggest that these changes were not sustained. The proportions of the different units of milk sold also changed in the weeks following each campaign (p < .0001). Sales of whole milk gallon units decreased from 36.3% to 28.4% in Santa Paula, and from 43.5% to 10.2% in East Los Angeles.
Conclusion.
Highly focused campaigns to promote substitution of high-fat milk with low-fat or nonfat milk can show dramatic initial changes in sales patterns. However, whether such campaigns can have a sustained impact in largely Latino/Hispanic communities is not evident.