Incorporating Behavioral Economics into Healthy Food Purchasing Interventions

Incorporating Behavioral Economics into Healthy Food Purchasing Interventions
5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. | Independence E | 
Moderator: Joanne F. Guthrie, PhD, MPH, RD, USDA - Economic Research Service
Speakers: Lisa Mancino, PhD, USDA Economic Research Service; Molly De Marco, PhD, MPH, University of North Carolina Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention; Mihai Niculescu, PhD, New Mexico State University
Behavioral economics suggests innovative strategies for encouraging healthy food purchasing. This session presents new data on SNAP participant food purchasing from USDA’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchases Study (Food APS). It explores how behavioral economics strategies can be used to nudge low-income consumers to make healthy, economical food purchases and the potential for incorporating such strategies into healthy purchasing promotion activities conducted by nutritionists through SNAP-Ed and other programs. Attendees should leave with new ideas for behavioral economics research and practice strategies to promote healthy food purchasing by SNAP participants and other consumers.
Learning Objectives:
Learn what USDA’s new National Household Food Acquisitions and Purchasing Study (Food APS) can tell nutrition researchers and educators about how to design healthy food purchasing interventions.
Understand how behavioral economics-based strategies can be used to encourage healthy purchasing in supermarkets.
Discover what types of healthy purchasing interventions can be conducted with SNAP-Ed funds and how behavioral economics concepts can be used to design and test the effectiveness of healthy purchasing interventions conducted by nutrition educators working with SNAP-Ed and other programs.
Session organized by the Communications Division.