Mexican Households' Purchases of Foods and Beverages Vary by Store-Type, Taxation Status, and SES.

Lilia Pedraza,Barry Popkin,Juan Salgado,Lindsey Taillie

doi:10.3390/nu10081044

Abstract

Where people shop for food is often linked to the healthiness of food purchases. In Mexico, no research has examined the connection between where people shop, what they buy, and their socioeconomic status (SES). Mexico’s sugary beverage and junk food taxes have made households decrease purchases of taxed products. However, whether households have changed where they shop is unknown. To address this gap, we use a repeated cross-sectional analysis of household packaged food and beverage purchases from the Nielsen Mexico Consumer Panel Survey from 2012 to 2015 (n > 5500 households). We examine changes in the volume of the purchase of taxed and untaxed products from different store-types (i.e., convenience stores, supermarkets, traditional retailers, wholesalers, home water-delivery, and others) by SES using multivariate linear regression models. Results show that high-SES households purchased more foods and beverages at all store-types except for low-SES who purchased the most foods and taxed beverages at traditional retailers. Purchases of taxed foods and beverages from traditional retailers significantly decreased for low-SES and middle-SES households and from supermarkets for middle-SES and high-SES households. Purchases of untaxed beverages from wholesalers significantly increased for middle-SES households and from convenience stores for high-SES households. Our findings suggest that consumers choose different stores to purchase beverages than to purchase foods and that taxes may have differentially affected each store-type.

Highlights

Diet quality is a leading contributor to obesity, diabetes, and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) [1]
From 2012 to 2015, more than 50% of the Nielsen Company’s Mexico Consumer Panel Services (CPS) households belonged to the middle socioeconomic strata (SES)
In 2015, 37% of total beverage purchases were received via home water-delivery, 35% of total beverage purchases were made in traditional retailers, 12% in other retailers, 11% in supermarkets, and 5% in convenience stores

Summary

Introduction

Diet quality is a leading contributor to obesity, diabetes, and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) [1]. Where people shop for food could influence the healthiness of what they buy and subsequently consume. In high-income countries, there is growing research linking the food environment including the type of stores (e.g., convenience stores and supermarkets) and the availability of products to the shopping behavior, food choices, and diet of consumers [2,3,4,5,6]. In high-income-countries, access to and the purchase of different foods is influenced by individuals’ socioeconomic status (SES) [8]. In the US, rural, low-income, and minority populations have less access to supermarkets and to healthy foods than their urban and higher-income counterparts [3,9]. The majority of research to date has focused on high-income countries and not much is known about whether the nutritional quality of food

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