There is a multitude of assumptions among food system practitioners about where people shop for food and what they choose to buy. Popular wisdom frequently does not reflect research findings.

As part of the seven-year Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast through Regional Foods Systems (EFSNE) project, our interdisciplinary research team studied the connections among food purchasing, distribution, pro­cessing, and production in the Northeast, as well as many other factors that are affecting the food supply in the NE region.[1]  In our paper on food purchasing, we had the opportunity to examine food shopping at a regional level using primary and secondary data.

We compared our findings to studies similar in scope, specifically, studies that used income, purchasing frequency, store expenditures, or urban and rural residency as a means to understand store selection. We also reviewed studies that sought to understand how income, education, race/ethnicity, use of federal nutrition programs, urban and rural residency, and presence of children in the household influence what people purchase.

We anticipated that purchasing habits would vary based on our study criteria, especially income and education, but that wasn’t the case; there were few differences between where people shopped and what food they chose to buy. We did learn some lessons, however, by looking at the small differences and similarities among households.

Supermarkets retain their status as the most popular place to shop

There’s no arguing that the supermarket industry is undergoing massive changes; consolidation, competition with non-grocery retailers (e.g., dollar stores, drug stores), and ecommerce are cited regularly as threats to the existing business model. [2]  Yet when we asked shoppers exiting our EFSNE stores about their primary store for shopping, 88% of them reported that they shopped at supermarkets.

Limited-assortment supermarkets—low-priced stores that offer a limited assortment of center-store and perishable items—were more popular with people using federal nutrition programs than those not using federal nutrition programs; 30% of them identified limited-assortment stores, like Sav-A-Lot, as their primary store, similar to the Chrisinger et al. (2018) study that reported that lower-income households spend a larger percentage of their budget at limited-assortment stores.

We are all buying pretty much the same types of food

We found very few purchasing differences between low-income and higher-income households when looking at several foods: low-fat dairy, wheat bread, and ground beef. But our store intercept survey and the Consumer Network Panel results did show that more low-income households purchased all of the market basket items and in larger quantities. This result is consistent with findings from other studies showing that low-income households purchase more food to be consumed at home.[3]

Formal education is the main factor in purchasing decisions

Our intercept survey found that people with higher levels of education were less likely to buy the less healthy versions of the market basket items, e.g., white bread/wheat bread. Handbury et al. determined that within the same store, people with higher educational levels purchase healthier foods more frequently than people with less education. [4]

Having children in the household was positively correlated with purchasing the market basket items, probably because families with children are cooking more at home. This finding, too, is no surprise, but may challenge some of our assumptions about how low-income families eat.

The complexity of our and other researchers’findings on shopping and purchasing patterns do not lend themselves to simple or single solutions. Supermarkets may change perceptions of food access, encourage economic development, and even increase the purchase of healthier food. In the short term, attracting supermarkets to neighborhoods without them can be part of the solution, but they will not level the dietary playing field, nor should we expect them to. In the long term, people need quality education, access to good jobs with livable wages, and affordable housing to make different decisions at the supermarket.  On the long road to better health outcomes, we need to extend our advocacy efforts to support policymakers and other organizations that advocate for those issues as well. Solving systemic problems will require us to develop a variety of strategies, ideally implemented simultaneously.

The article Enhancing understanding of food purchasing patterns in the Northeast US using multiple datasets by Anne Palmer, Alessandro Bonanno, Kate Clancy, Clare Cho, Rebecca Cleary and Ryan Lee is available free for a month.

[1] For more in depth information about the EFSNE project, see the following paper: Clancy, K., Bonanno, A., Canning, P., Cleary, R., Conrad, Z., Fleisher, D., Gómez, M., Griffin, T., Lee, R., Kane, D., Palmer, A., Park, K., Peters, C. J., & Tichenor, N. (2017). Using a Market Basket to Explore Regional Food Systems. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 7(4), 163-178. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2017.074.018

[2] Chrisinger, BW, Kallan, MJ, Whiteman, ED, Hillier, A. Where do US households purchase healthy foods? An analysis of food-at-home purchases across different types of retailers in a nationally representative dataset, Preventive Medicine, and 2018; Cho C. & Volpe R. Independent Grocery Stores in the Changing Landscape of the U.S. Food Retail Industry, ERR-240, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, November 2017.

[3] Saksena MJ, Okrent AM, Anekwe TD, Cho C, Dicken C, Effland A, Elitzak H, Guthrie J, Hamrick HS, Hyman J, Jo Y, Lin B, Mancino L, McLaughlin PW, Rahkovsky I, Ralston K, Smith TA, Stewart H, Todd J and Tuttle C America’s eating habits: food away from home, USDA Economic Research Service (ERS). Economic Information Bulletin 196. US Government Printing Office, Washington,DC. 2018.

[4] Handbury, J., Rahkovsky,I., and Schnell, M. What Drives Nutritional Disparities? Retail Access and Food Purchases Across the Socioeconomic Spectrum. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 21126, 2015.

Photos courtesy of Anne Palmer.