Sociodemographic disparities in purchases of fruit drinks with policy relevant front-of-package nutrition claims

OBJECTIVE: Our objectives were to describe sociodemographic characteristics associated with the purchase of (1) any fruit drinks and (2) fruit drinks with specific front-of-package (FOP) nutrition claims. DESIGN: Cross-sectional. SETTING: USA PARTICIPANTS: We merged fruit drink purchasing data from 60 712 household-months from 5233 households with children 0–5 years participating in Nielsen Homescan in 2017 with nutrition claims data. We examined differences in predicted probabilities of purchasing any fruit drinks by race/ethnicity, income and education. We constructed inverse probability (IP) weights based on likelihood of purchasing any fruit drinks. We used IP-weighted multivariable logistic regression models to examine predicted probabilities of purchasing fruit drinks with specific FOP claims. RESULTS: One-third of households with young children purchased any fruit drinks. Non-Hispanic (NH) Black (51·6 %), Hispanic (36·3 %), lower-income (39·3 %) and lower-educated households (40·9 %) were more likely to purchase any fruit drinks than NH White (31·3 %), higher-income (25·8 %) and higher-educated households (30·3 %) (all P < 0·001). In IP-weighted analyses, NH Black households were more likely to purchase fruit drinks with ‘Natural’ and fruit or fruit flavour claims (6·8 % and 3·7 %) than NH White households (4·5 % and 2·7 %) (both P < 0·01). Lower- and middle-income (15·0 % and 13·8 %) and lower- and middle-educated households (15·4 % and 14·5 %) were more likely to purchase fruit drinks with ‘100 % Vitamin C’ claims than higher-income (10·8 %) and higher-educated households (12·9 %) (all P < 0·025). CONCLUSIONS: We found a higher likelihood of fruit drink purchases in lower-income, lower-educated, NH Black and Hispanic households. Experimental studies should determine if nutrition claims may be contributing to disparities in fruit drink consumption.