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By Eryn Brown and Teresa Watanabe

Since state laws made it harder for California elementary school kids to get their hands on sugary drinks and junk food snacks on campus, researchers found, students’ risk of becoming overweight or obese fell slightly — but mostly if they came from higher-income neighborhoods.

Examining body mass index measurements of 2,700,880 fifth-graders in the state over 10 years, researchers found that students in those neighborhoods saw their odds of exceeding a healthy weight fall by about 1% a year. For all other students, the trends remained essentially flat.

“The magnitude of improvements depended on levels of school neighborhood socioeconomic advantage,” the study authors wrote Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

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