Presentation Title
Impact of Point of Sales Nutritional Labels on Food Purchase: Evidence from the Rural Midwest
Keywords
Grocery stores, Nutrition education
Description
This presentation shares findings from a study that examined changes in food purchase behavior among patrons of rural grocery stores in response to an intervention that provided succinct easy-to interpret nutritional information at points of sales. Unlike other studies that are based on experimental settings in urban areas, our study is based on patrons of six locally owned grocery stores in communities with population less than 2,500 in the rural Midwest, two receiving the intervention and four serving as controls. Besides, the study is more holistic as it takes into account the unique constraints that rural residents face in terms of food store environments measured using the metrics recommended by the Nutritional Environment Measures Survey (NEMS), the impact of Extension education programs implemented to improve nutritional awareness among store patrons in the study stores, and consumer perceptions and attitudes toward food choices collected through surveys administered to store patrons.
Preliminary findings show that despite facing steeper prices, the mean nutritional score per item of purchases made in the control stores increased during the study period while that of purchases made by patrons in the treatment stores decreased indicating a shift in favor of more healthful purchases. The presentation concludes by highlighting policy solutions based on the study findings. Easy-to-interpret nutritional disclosures can contribute toward helping rural consumers make more informed food purchase choices. Interventions and changes to food systems can be more successful if complemented with outreach activities to educate residents about the information available and how to use it to their advantage.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Impact of Point of Sales Nutritional Labels on Food Purchase: Evidence from the Rural Midwest
This presentation shares findings from a study that examined changes in food purchase behavior among patrons of rural grocery stores in response to an intervention that provided succinct easy-to interpret nutritional information at points of sales. Unlike other studies that are based on experimental settings in urban areas, our study is based on patrons of six locally owned grocery stores in communities with population less than 2,500 in the rural Midwest, two receiving the intervention and four serving as controls. Besides, the study is more holistic as it takes into account the unique constraints that rural residents face in terms of food store environments measured using the metrics recommended by the Nutritional Environment Measures Survey (NEMS), the impact of Extension education programs implemented to improve nutritional awareness among store patrons in the study stores, and consumer perceptions and attitudes toward food choices collected through surveys administered to store patrons.
Preliminary findings show that despite facing steeper prices, the mean nutritional score per item of purchases made in the control stores increased during the study period while that of purchases made by patrons in the treatment stores decreased indicating a shift in favor of more healthful purchases. The presentation concludes by highlighting policy solutions based on the study findings. Easy-to-interpret nutritional disclosures can contribute toward helping rural consumers make more informed food purchase choices. Interventions and changes to food systems can be more successful if complemented with outreach activities to educate residents about the information available and how to use it to their advantage.
