{"id":17155,"date":"2019-07-10T01:11:15","date_gmt":"2019-07-10T01:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=17155"},"modified":"2019-07-11T15:24:03","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T15:24:03","slug":"selecting-groceries-ahead-of-time-helps-some-shoppers-make-healthier-choices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/selecting-groceries-ahead-of-time-helps-some-shoppers-make-healthier-choices\/","title":{"rendered":"Selecting groceries ahead of time helps some shoppers make healthier choices"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anya Samek<\/a>, University of Southern California \u2013 Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

I often toss items into my grocery cart that I have vowed to never buy again.<\/p>\n

Maybe I cave into my 3-year-old\u2019s demands for sugary cereal and cookies. Or perhaps I fail to resist my own urge to snack on chocolate-covered raisins.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not alone. Most Americans consume more added sugar<\/a>, saturated fat and sodium \u2013 and fewer servings of fruits and vegetables \u2013 than nutritionists recommend. Our diets<\/a> are a major reason why about 40% of U.S. adults<\/a> are obese, and run an outsized risk of developing health problems such as Type 2 diabetes and heart disease<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a behavioral economist<\/a>, I get to study the underlying preferences behind common behaviors. When grocery pre-ordering services like Instacart<\/a> and Peapod<\/a> first emerged, I was sure they would fix my self-control problems at the supermarket. Pre-ordering my family\u2019s food and having it delivered seemed like a great way to avoid impulse purchases.<\/p>\n

Self-control<\/h2>\n

It might not be surprising to learn that self-control \u2013 or the lack of it \u2013 drives many personal decisions. It explains why people buy gym memberships and then rarely set foot in the gym<\/a>, make poor snack choices<\/a> and fail to save enough for retirement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Behavioral economists refer to these self-control problems<\/a> as \u201cdynamic inconsistency<\/a>.\u201d In terms of food, this means what people want to eat for the sake of their health in the future often doesn\u2019t match what they\u2019re consuming this minute to satisfy the cravings they have right now. In other words, you might put items in your Instacart to eat later that you wouldn\u2019t put in your grocery cart to munch on the way home from the store.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Instacart is partnering with many supermarket chains, including Aldi.<\/span>
\nJeff Bukowski\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Can pre-ordering groceries help shoppers avoid making impulse purchases and make healthier choices<\/a> instead? I teamed up with University of California, San Diego economists Charles Sprenger<\/a> and Sally Sadoff<\/a> to find out.<\/p>\n

We partnered with grocery stores in Los Angeles<\/a> and Chicago<\/a> to collect data on the impact of pre-ordering groceries.<\/p>\n

Apples and carrots<\/h2>\n

To keep things simple, we initially offered about 400 customers the choice of 10 free foods from a set of 20. Some of the foods on offer were clearly healthy \u2013 apples, carrots and the like. Others were obviously not \u2013 greasy potato chips, sugary candy bars and so on.<\/p>\n

Half of the customers taking part in our studies were Chicagoans and half were Angelenos. To recruit, we set up tables in a busy section of the stores, asking passersby to complete a short questionnaire and select their free food.<\/p>\n

Because my research emphasizes policies that could help people facing economic hardship, we worked with stores that were located in low-income neighborhoods \u2013 nearly half of the grocery shoppers who participated told us they got Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program<\/a> benefits from the nation\u2019s largest program designed to alleviate hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is now piloting<\/a> a pre-ordering program for people like these who get SNAP benefits, which are also known as food stamps.<\/p>\n

Conducting the study in two places helped us see if the results would be different depending on the demographics because most of the Chicago participants were black and most of the Los Angeles participants were Latino.<\/p>\n

Supermarket experiment<\/h2>\n

Ideally we would have compared the food that shoppers buy when they pre-order with what happens when they go to the store, but there would have been too many variables, such as pricing and convenience, that might have muddied our results. Instead, we created experimental conditions and asked people to choose among them if they wanted something free by pre-ordering it a week ahead.<\/p>\n

When we delivered the food a week later, we surprised customers with the chance to change their order because we wanted to compare the food people would order for their future self versus the the food they wanted right away. Based on prevailing economic theories<\/a>, we hypothesized that people would swap healthier foods for less healthy foods.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s exactly what happened. About 40% of the customers taking part in our study made at least one exchange. The foods most people ended up with were higher in calories, fat and added sugar than their pre-ordered foods. For instance, they might swap out a red pepper for a bag of Doritos or an orange for a Snickers bar.<\/p>\n

These findings suggest that many people are \u201cdynamically inconsistent\u201d \u2013 the choice they pick for their future self is different from the choice they pick when they get to eat the food immediately. And, they are inconsistent in the predicted direction \u2013 they\u2019re much more likely to swap out the pepper for the Doritos than the other way around.<\/p>\n