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Consumer demand for nutrition versus taste in four major food categories
Author(s) -
Binkley James K.,
Golub Alla
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.29
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1574-0862
pISSN - 0169-5150
DOI - 10.1111/j.1574-0862.2010.00471.x
Subject(s) - taste , demographics , consumer demand , economics , sample (material) , breakfast cereal , food choice , food products , food science , agricultural economics , marketing , business , biology , microeconomics , medicine , demography , chemistry , chromatography , pathology , sociology
This study addresses the trade‐off between nutrition and taste in expenditure on breakfast cereal, milk, bread, and soft drinks. Within each category, products have similar cost and convenience, but have markedly different flavor and nutritional content. Using annual expenditure data for a large sample of households participating in the ACNielsen Homescan system, we regress a measure of “healthiness” on household demographics and market prices, and find that households with college‐educated heads and higher incomes made significantly healthier choices in all four categories. These effects are puzzling in that the nutritional differences between products were well known to consumers, and there are no cost or convenience differences between them. The presence of children was associated with less healthy choices, especially for cereal and bread, while older households made healthier choices in all categories except milk.