7 - Measuring the food environment using scanner data

Abstract

Household scanner data can be used to calculate measures of the healthfulness of the food environment. These measures can then be used to model the effects of the food environment on the nutritional quality of household food purchases. In this chapter, we demonstrate an approach to measuring the healthfulness of the food environment using scanner and dietary recall data. Using scanner data purchases and the estimated parameters from regression models with dietary recall data, we calculate household-level and retail chain-level approximate healthy eating indexes (aHEI). We then use these measures in reduced-form models of the nutritional quality of household food purchases while accounting for the endogeneity associated with household and store location choice.