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Price Trends Are Similar for Fruits, Vegetables, and Snack Foods

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  • Kuchler, Fred
  • Stewart, Hayden

Abstract

An increase in the price of fruits and vegetables relative to less healthy foods could reduce consumers’ incentives to purchase fruits and vegetables and result in less healthy diets. Whether such a change in relative prices and incentives has occurred in the United States is difficult to prove because of substantial quality improvements in many fresh fruits and vegetables. For commonly consumed fresh fruits and vegetables for which quality has remained fairly constant, analysis of price trends reveals a price decline similar to that of dessert and snack foods. This price trend evidence suggests that the price of a healthy diet has not changed relative to an unhealthy one, although a healthy diet might not include every fresh fruit or vegetable currently available.

Suggested Citation

  • Kuchler, Fred & Stewart, Hayden, 2008. "Price Trends Are Similar for Fruits, Vegetables, and Snack Foods," Economic Research Report 56447, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:uersrr:56447
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.56447
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Huffman Wallace E. & Huffman Sonya K & Rickertsen Kyrre & Tegene Abebayehu, 2010. "Over-Nutrition and Changing Health Status in High Income Countries," Forum for Health Economics & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 1-44, June.
    2. Ren, Yanjun & Castro Campos, Bente & Loy, Jens-Peter & Brosig, Stephan, 2019. "Low-income and overweight in China: Evidence from a life-course utility model," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 18(8), pages 1753-1767.
    3. Todd, Jessica E. & Leibtag, Ephraim S. & Penberthy, Corttney, 2011. "Geographic Differences in the Relative Price of Healthy Foods," Economic Information Bulletin 117976, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    4. Arnade, Carlos & Kuchler, Fred, 2015. "Measuring the Impacts of Off-Season Berry Imports," Economic Research Report 229201, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    5. Chen, Susan E. & Liu, Jing & Binkley, James K., 2012. "An Exploration of the Relationship Between Income and Eating Behavior," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 41(1), pages 1-10, April.
    6. Christine Moorman & Rosellina Ferraro & Joel Huber, 2012. "Unintended Nutrition Consequences: Firm Responses to the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(5), pages 717-737, September.
    7. Richard Volpe & Edward C Jaenicke & Lauren Chenarides, 2018. "Store Formats, Market Structure, and Consumers’ Food Shopping Decisions," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(4), pages 672-694, December.
    8. Binkley, James K., 2010. "Low Income And Poor Health Choices: The Example Of Smoking," Working papers 58419, Purdue University, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    9. Rafael Moreira Claro & Vargas Hernandez & Joel Alberto & Satoru Shimokawa & Euna Han & Sharada Keats & Steve Wiggins, 2015. "The Rising Cost of a Healthy Diet – Changing Relative prices of Foods in High- Income and Emerging Economies," Working Papers id:7250, eSocialSciences.
    10. Wendt, Minh & Todd, Jessica E., 2011. "The Effect of Food and Beverage Prices on Children's Weights," Economic Research Report 134705, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    11. Nicholas R V Jones & Annalijn I Conklin & Marc Suhrcke & Pablo Monsivais, 2014. "The Growing Price Gap between More and Less Healthy Foods: Analysis of a Novel Longitudinal UK Dataset," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(10), pages 1-7, October.

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