Thanks and a gingerbread man to Slashfood for the pointer to a new database on food legislation from the Yale University Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Actually there are several resources at the Rudd Center, but let’s start with the database.

The database of US legislation related to food policy and obesity is available at http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/legislation/. Here you can search for legislation, get bill updates, get a list of bills that have been enacted into law, and get details on Congressional lobbying. The search is not a keyword search; instead, it’s a series of drop down menus that allow you to specify a particular state (or Federal legislation) and what issue. Once you’ve specified an issue, you’ll get a list of bills sorted by state. I searched for all legislation related to “Access to Healthy Food” and got around two dozen bills from Alaska to Washington.

Bills have their own pages which include status, summary, sponsor information, and links on the appropriate state’s legislation page. All the status updates I found were from February, March, and April.

If you’re interested in various food legislation issues, poke around the rest of the Rudd Center site. You’ll find a map of soft drink tax legislation (PDF format), podcasts, and policy briefs and reports.