Bye-bye impulse buys? Junk food to disappear from checkout lines in one California city

Imagine you’re checking out at your local grocery store. You have everything you need in your shopping cart, but that sugar-loaded candybar on display is calling your name, so you throw it on the conveyor belt.

Enjoy it while you can because that impulse buy will no longer be an option in Berkeley, California after its city council unanimously passed an ordinance banning stores from offering certain junk foods in the checkout lines, the East Bay Times reported.

Grocery stores over 2,500 square feet are required to “sell more nutritious food and beverage options in their checkout areas,” the ordinance says.

Retailers must replace candy, chips, sugary beverages and other junk food items with foods that have “no more than five grams of added sugar or 250 milligrams of sodium per serving,” according to the East Bay Times.

The city of Berkeley’s ordinance is the first of its kind in the country, KTVU reported. The city was also the first to implement a tax on sugary drinks in 2014, according to the ordinance.

Twenty-five retailers in the city — including Safe Way, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Berkeley Bowl Marketplace — have until March 21 to make the changes, the Times reported. The ordinance includes justification for the ban based on studies that have shown “consumers purchased 17% fewer sweets, chocolate and potato chips” when those items were excluded from checkout areas.

“Parents don’t stand a chance from soda singing and candy calling to them in the checkout, Holley Scheider, a member of the city’s sugar-sweetened beverage commission, told the newspaper.

The city will enforce the ordinance by focusing “primarily on positive education and secondarily on traditional enforcement,” the ordinance states.