Anne Palmer, Program Director at Eating for the Future, recently published some fascinating research on how families make grocery shopping decisions in a low-income environment. The paper, titled “A Framework for Understanding Grocery Purchasing in a Low-Income Environment”  was published in Qualitative Health Research this February.

Here’s more about the article from Anne:

In our recently published paper, we asked low-income families about how they ate, cooked and shopped for their families, and how they thought that supermarkets could make it easier for them to make healthier food choices. From 33 in-depth interviews and three focus groups, we found that external and internal factors shape shoppers’ decisions. While our research participants consistently understood and valued healthy eating concepts, their purchases did not reflect what they valued.

Not surprisingly, people were most concerned about being able to provide sufficient quantity of food for their families and still stay within their budget. In other words, keeping hunger at bay was the Number One concern. But there were other concerns as well, such as food spoilage, the cost of travel to the stores, and food waste that results from trying new foods that are then rejected by family members. These concerns translated to strategies such as comparing sale papers, deciding if the additional travel cost is worth the price differential, using coupons, watching for sales and promotions, buying in bulk when possible, shopping at several stores but also calculating the cost of returning items in the event they spoil early, selecting non-perishables, and limiting purchases to familiar foods. All this happens before shoppers walk in the door.

Read Anne’s blog post about her research here. The paper, “A Framework for Understanding Grocery Purchasing in a Low-Income Environment,” is downloadable through the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health here.