School Nutrition Mandates and the Household Grocery Basket

Résumé du livre

In 2012, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) placed strict nutritional requirements on food served at public schools. Did changes to the healthiness of school meals lead parents to substitute towards them, and away from purchasing meals from supermarkets? If so, which households were more willing to change what they eat? We document a decrease in the quantity of food purchased for at home consumption in response to the HHFKA, but little change in food quality. Consistent with substitution towards now-healthier school meals, much of this shift is attributable to UPCs likely to be purchased for children and UPCs traditionally associated with breakfast and lunch (the meals served at school). We find that substitution is mostly driven by households with smaller, less-healthy shopping baskets, and that these smaller shopping baskets likely reflect outsourcing meal preparation due to time constraints. Our findings suggest that there may be a segment of households seeking healthy and convenient food options not yet available to them, such as those provided by the HHFKA. Moreover, this suggests that effort expended on warning households to avoid "convenience" food may be better spent on helping them identify healthy, convenient alternatives.