Sugar-sweetened beverage intake and convenience store shopping as mediators of the food insecurity–Tooth decay relationship among low-income children in Washington state

Courtney M. Hill; Donald L. Chi; Lloyd A. Mancl; Jessica C. Jones-Smith; Nadine Chan; Brian E. Saelens; Christy M. McKinney

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0290287

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 6, 2023
22 May 2023 Decision Letter - Boyen Huang, Editor PONE-D-23-10186Sugar-sweetened beverage intake and convenience store shopping as mediators of the food insecurity–tooth decay relationship among low-income children in Washington StatePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Hill, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. While I encourage you to respond to each comment made by the four peer reviewers, you are not required to follow a suggestion that asks you to cite specific publications in the manuscript. Please focus on other comments when preparing for a revision. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 06 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Boyen Huang, DDS, MHA, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. 3. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. 5. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: No ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Dear Authors, this paper about sugar-sweetened beverage intake and convenience store shopping as mediators of the food insecurity–tooth decay relationship among low-income children in Washington State is really interesting and well performed. I am sure it will help both clinicians and researchers to improve their job. Overall the paper is well written, nevertheless some issues need to be solved before its final publication in the journal. Abstract: please divide abstract into introduction, materials and methods, results, conclusion. Introduction: this part of an article is really important and it helps the reader to deep into the subject. Materials and methods and results are overall well described an easy to understand. Discussion: this part is well written but i would suggest to enlarge a little the discussion focusing also in a general population. Reviewer #2: This research topic is a creative approach to the relationship between food insecurity and dental caries which is attracting global attention and problems. It is difficult to determine the relevance of dental caries in that they are cumulative diseases and do not progress in a short period of time. In this respect, it is interesting to study using causal mediation techniques. The limitations and questions about this study are well described in the manuscript. However, sugar-containing drinks have no mechanism to cause tooth decay so it is recommended to add this part. It is also recommended that you write additional criteria for the sample size in the methods. Thank you. Reviewer #3: Thank-you for the opportunity to review this interesting paper. It is a well written manuscript with an interesting and valuable analysis that attempts to better understand the interaction of food insecurity, SSB consumption and convenience store shopping on dental caries. I have made a few comments and suggestions below> Introduction It would be useful to state how food insecurity is defined. It may be beneficial to expand on the rationale for using mediation analysis, particularly as it may be unfamiliar to some readers. Methods The authors mention that the data was collected at a period that would not overlap with the introduction of the SSB tax. For completeness it would be useful to include the date that the SSB tax was introduced. One of the eligibility criteria was ‘annual household income <312% of the Federal Poverty Level.’ This is a weirdly specific percentage, but presumably has some rationale? One of the eligibility criteria was ‘child consumed SSBs’. Yet 42 of the children in the final sample were categorised as having a SSB intake of 0 fl oz/day. Shouldn’t these children have been excluded from the study? It might be useful to make a comment on the validity and reliability of the BEV-Q for assessing beverage consumption (and particularly the difference if any between caregiver assessment for children <11 years and self-assessment for children >11 years). For the measure ‘frequency of convenience store shopping’, was this assessed as a family unit and reported by the caregiver for all participants, or was it assessed by the caregiver for children <11 years and by self-assessment for children >11 years? I’m wondering whether children >11 years might independently purchase SSBs (or other foods/drinks) from convenience stores independently of the family. Reviewer #4: This study of sugar-sweetened beverage intake and convenience store shopping as mediators of the food insecurity–tooth decay contributes to a small but growing body of evidence related to structural factors linked to tooth decay. The paper is well organized, and the analysis clearly described. However, in examining Table 1 - there are some discrepancies. The child race statistics appear to be in the wrong columns. There is also inconsistency in how variables are reported which diminishes clarity. Some variables include the entire N, while others do not. Reporting age by age groups would provide more clarity on the age characteristics of the sample rather than just reporting the mean. Finally, some limitations of having 11 to 16 year old's self-report their beverage intake, e.g., social desirability bias, should be discussed. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No Reviewer #4: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290287.r001
Revision 1
6 Jul 2023 Author Response Academic Editor- Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Style requirements have been checked and we ensured that our manuscript meets the requirements. 2. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. The information in the Financial Disclosure section should be as follows: “This work was support by funds from Seattle Children’s Research Institute and ARCORA – The Foundation of Delta Dental of Washington. Funding for the Sugary Beverage Tax evaluation in Seattle was provided through ordinance by the City of Seattle. Elected representatives and city staff did not influence the evaluation findings or interpretation of findings.” 3. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. We do not wish to make changes to the Data Availability Statement. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. Captions for the supporting information files were included. 5. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. The reference list has been reviewed and no changes were made. Reviewer #1: Dear Authors, this paper about sugar-sweetened beverage intake and convenience store shopping as mediators of the food insecurity–tooth decay relationship among low-income children in Washington State is really interesting and well performed. I am sure it will help both clinicians and researchers to improve their job. Overall the paper is well written, nevertheless some issues need to be solved before its final publication in the journal. Thank you for reviewing our paper and providing comments. Abstract: please divide abstract into introduction, materials and methods, results, conclusion. We have added subheadings to the abstract per your comment. Introduction: this part of an article is really important and it helps the reader to deep into the subject. Materials and methods and results are overall well described an easy to understand. Discussion: this part is well written but i would suggest to enlarge a little the discussion focusing also in a general population. Thank you for your comment. We compared our results for the association of household food insecurity and tooth decay in the discussion to other studies in the general population and state that findings are consistent. Specifically, we cite three studies that used the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which is a representative cross-section of the general U.S. population of children. We also discuss the implications of a sugar-sweetened beverage tax more generally and cite a meta-analysis that discusses evaluations of a such a tax across multiple national and municipal governments to expand the interpretation of this study. Reviewer #2: This research topic is a creative approach to the relationship between food insecurity and dental caries which is attracting global attention and problems. Thank you for reviewing our paper and providing comments. It is difficult to determine the relevance of dental caries in that they are cumulative diseases and do not progress in a short period of time. In this respect, it is interesting to study using causal mediation techniques. The limitations and questions about this study are well described in the manuscript. However, sugar-containing drinks have no mechanism to cause tooth decay so it is recommended to add this part. We have revised the manuscript to try and make this clearer. In the introduction, we state that, “excess intake of added sugars, including those from SSBs is causally associated with the development of tooth decay.[17,18]” (lines 51-53). In the discussion, we further state that, “We also found that higher levels of SSB intake tended to be associated with higher levels of tooth decay, which aligns with the biological understanding of how sugar acts as a substrate for bacteria that cause tooth decay.[17]” (lines 295-296) To make it clear that the potential mechanism by which sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) can influence tooth decay is through sugar acting as a substrate for oral bacteria that cause tooth decay, we expanded the statement in the introduction: “Excess intake of added sugars, including those from SSBs, is causally associated with the development of tooth decay, because sugar acts as a substrate for oral bacteria that cause tooth decay.[17,18]” (lines 51-53) It is also recommended that you write additional criteria for the sample size in the methods. We have stated the study criteria in the methods: “There were five eligibility criteria for participation in the additional study: (1) the child was in 1st to 9th grade (5 to 16 years old); (2) the child consumed SSBs based on parent report; (3) the annual household income was <312% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL); (4) the caregiver was ≥18 years old; and (5) the caregiver spoke English, Spanish, Somali or Vietnamese. The screening item about SSBs was, “Does your child ever drink sugary beverages like: regular soda/pop (such as Coke or Sprite), fruit-flavored drinks (like Sunny Delight), coffee or tea drinks with added sugar (like Starbucks Frappucinnos, Arizona Iced Tea, Chai Tea, bubble tea), or regular sports drinks or energy drinks (such as Gatorade or Red Bull)?”. The SeaSAW study had slightly different child age criterion; namely, children were required to be either 7-10 or 12-17 years old, but otherwise had the same inclusion criteria.[33]”. (lines 93-103) We also state in the study results how the final sample size was arrived at: “Of the 452 study participants, 27 were excluded for missing data on the exposure variable (food insecurity). The final sample size was 425.” (lines 229-230) Thank you. Reviewer #3: Thank-you for the opportunity to review this interesting paper. It is a well written manuscript with an interesting and valuable analysis that attempts to better understand the interaction of food insecurity, SSB consumption and convenience store shopping on dental caries. I have made a few comments and suggestions below> Thank you for reviewing our paper and providing comments. Introduction It would be useful to state how food insecurity is defined. We agree, and have added the United States Department of Agriculture’s definition of food insecurity to the introduction: “According to the United States Department of Agriculture, food insecurity is a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food [16]” (lines 38-40) It may be beneficial to expand on the rationale for using mediation analysis, particularly as it may be unfamiliar to some readers. We have included additional rationale for using mediation analysis in the last paragraph of the introduction: “Mediation analysis was used in this analysis because it is a tool used to discover and test possible causal relationships by teasing apart direct effects of an exposure on an outcome from indirect effects that occur through a third mediator variable.” (lines 71-74) Methods The authors mention that the data was collected at a period that would not overlap with the introduction of the SSB tax. For completeness it would be useful to include the date that the SSB tax was introduced. We revised the methods to state when the tax went into effect (January 2018) (lines 84-85) Measuring baseline dental caries within 4 to 6 months of tax implementation reasonably estimates caries status pre-tax given the time progression of caries. Change in caries status typically requires at least 2 years of follow-up. One of the eligibility criteria was ‘annual household income <312% of the Federal Poverty Level.’ This is a weirdly specific percentage, but presumably has some rationale? There are various ways to define lower income. <312% of the Federal Poverty Level corresponds to cut-off points used by Washington state policies for public health insurance. For example, Apple Health for Kids (Washington state Medicaid program/ the public-insurance program in Washington state) uses 312% of the Federal Poverty level as the upper limit for eligibility for plans. One of the eligibility criteria was ‘child consumed SSBs’. Yet 42 of the children in the final sample were categorised as having a SSB intake of 0 fl oz/day. Shouldn’t these children have been excluded from the study? Children were screened into the study based on a single item that required an affirmative answer: “The screening item about SSBs was, “Does your child ever drink sugary beverages like: regular soda/pop (such as Coke or Sprite), fruit-flavored drinks (like Sunny Delight), coffee or tea drinks with added sugar (like Starbucks Frappucinnos, Arizona Iced Tea, Chai Tea, bubble tea), or regular sports drinks or energy drinks (such as Gatorade or Red Bull)?”.” (lines 97-101) Forty-two children in the final sample had a reported intake of SSB of 0 fl/oz per day based on responses to BEV-Q which captures typical intake in the past 30 days. Therefore, it is possible that while these children do sometimes drink SSB, typical intake in the past 30 days was about 0 fl/oz per day. For this reason, these children were not excluded from the final sample (see lines 100-102). It might be useful to make a comment on the validity and reliability of the BEV-Q for assessing beverage consumption (and particularly the difference if any between caregiver assessment for children <11 years and self-assessment for children >11 years). We included additional details about the validity and reliability testing of the BEV-Q in the methods: “The original BEV-Q was tested in adolescents and shown to have high validity against multiple 24-hour dietary recalls, high reliability across repeat measurements, and readability scores appropriate for individuals with a fourth grade education or higher.[40–42]” (lines 123-126) This was the justification for having parents report on younger children’s intake and those above 11 years to self-report. For the measure ‘frequency of convenience store shopping’, was this assessed as a family unit and reported by the caregiver for all participants, or was it assessed by the caregiver for children <11 years and by self-assessment for children >11 years? I’m wondering whether children >11 years might independently purchase SSBs (or other foods/drinks) from convenience stores independently of the family. This was reported by the caregiver for family-level grocery shopping patterns regardless of child age. It is certainly possible that children >11 years independently purchase SSBs and other drinks from the convenience store and this is a limitation of the measure. We added this as a limitation in addition to potential social desirability bias that adolescents may have exhibited when reporting their SSB intake on the BEV-Q: “Third, it is possible there was measurement error in SSB intake due to social desirability bias, especially for adolescents who self-reported their intake and in the measure of convenience store given that adults reporting shopping behaviors for the household may have not captured adolescent’s independent shopping behaviors. While the BEV-Q used in this study was found to be valid and reliable among adolescents,[40-42] this potential measurement error should be taken into account when interpreting the study findings.” (lines 400-406) Reviewer #4: This study of sugar-sweetened beverage intake and convenience store shopping as mediators of the food insecurity–tooth decay contributes to a small but growing body of evidence related to structural factors linked to tooth decay. The paper is well organized, and the analysis clearly described. Thank you for reviewing our paper and providing comments. However, in examining Table 1 - there are some discrepancies. The child race statistics appear to be in the wrong columns. Thank you for pointing out the error for race in Table 1 (the “food-secure” and “overall” column had been switched and are now corrected). There is also inconsistency in how variables are reported which diminishes clarity. Some variables include the entire N, while others do not. All variables in Table 1 are reported for the total number of participants with available non-missing data. Missingness is minor across most variables (<5%) with the child race exhibiting the highest level of missing data (n=65, 15%). Please also note that we added an explanation to the Table 1 notes that of the 65 children with missing race data, 61 (94%) reported Hispanic ethnicity. Reporting age by age groups would provide more clarity on the age characteristics of the sample rather than just reporting the mean. Age groups have been added to Table 1 to improve clarity. Finally, some limitations of having 11 to 16 year old's self-report their beverage intake, e.g., social desirability bias, should be discussed. We have added a limitation about our measures of both self-reported SSB intake for 11-16 year olds and the lack of measurement about independent convenience store shopping for the 11-16 year old age groups to the limitations: “Third, it is possible there was measurement error in SSB intake due to social desirability bias, especially for adolescents who self-reported their intake and in the measure of convenience store given that adults reporting shopping behaviors may have not captured adolescent’s independent shopping behaviors. While the BEV-Q used in this study was found to be valid and reliable among adolescents,[40-42] this potential measurement error should be taken into account when interpreting the study findings.” (lines 400-406) Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_R1.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290287.r002
7 Aug 2023 Decision Letter - Boyen Huang, Editor Sugar-sweetened beverage intake and convenience store shopping as mediators of the food insecurity–tooth decay relationship among low-income children in Washington State PONE-D-23-10186R1 Dear Dr. Hill, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Boyen Huang, DDS, MHA, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #4: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: (No Response) ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: (No Response) ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: (No Response) ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: (No Response) ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: I think this study will appeal to readers. Previous review content has been appropriately amended. The manuscript has been improved. Reviewer #3: Thank-you for the opportunity to review this re-submission. The authors have adequately addressed the concerns of the reviewers. I have no additional comments. Reviewer #4: (No Response) ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No Reviewer #4: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290287.r003
Formally Accepted
4 Sep 2023 Acceptance Letter - Boyen Huang, Editor PONE-D-23-10186R1 Sugar-sweetened beverage intake and convenience store shopping as mediators of the food insecurity–tooth decay relationship among low-income children in Washington State Dear Dr. Hill: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr Boyen Huang Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290287.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .