Chapter 5 - Changes in food consumption patterns: its importance to food security—application of one-way ANOVA

Abstract

Studying food consumption patterns is important as it contains useful information on household welfare and living standards and is an objective way to assess economic performance of countries. From a food security perspective, it is important to understand the changes in food consumption patterns as different income groups can react differently to changes in food imports and changes in food prices in international markets. Using a few studies on changing food consumption patterns in West Africa, an analysis of per capita food consumption patterns in India during the reform period and food consumption patterns in China and Vietnam, this chapter addresses the question of differences in the share of nutrients from various food groups according to the differences in income levels. We also discuss the implications of obesity and caloric exposure in the United States. The F distribution forms the basis for the analysis of variance technique introduced in this chapter. Describing the underlying assumption of analysis of variance procedure, the decomposition of total variation is explained. Both STATA and R codes for analysis are given.