Supermarket Receipts Research Articles

Food purchases in households with and without diabetes based on consumer purchase data

ObjectivesDietary recommendations for individuals with diabetes are easy to provide, but adherence is difficult to monitor. The objective of this study was to investigate whether there was a difference in grocery purchases between households with and without diabetes. Study designCohort study. MethodsConsumer purchase data in 2019 was collected from 6662 households donating their supermarket receipts via a receipt collecting service. Of these households, 718 included at least one individual with diabetes. The monetary percentages spent on specific food groups were used to characterize households using all purchases in 2019. A probability index model was used to compare households with diabetes to households without diabetes. ResultsWe included 405,264 shopping trips in 2019 attributed to 6662 households. Both households with and without diabetes spent the highest monetary percentage on sweets (with diabetes: 9.3%, without diabetes: 8.8%), with no statistically significant difference detected. However, compared to households without diabetes, households with diabetes had a significantly higher probability of spending a higher monetary percentage on butter, oil and dressings; non-sugary drinks; processed red meat and ready meals as well as a significantly lower probability of spending a higher monetary percentage on accessory compounds; alcoholic beverages; eggs; grains; rice and pasta, and raw vegetables. ConclusionsHouseholds with diabetes spent a relatively higher monetary value on several unhealthy foods and less on several healthy groceries compared to households without diabetes. There is a need for more diabetes self-management education focused on including more healthy dietary choices in their household grocery purchases.

Family food purchases of high- and low-calorie foods in full-service supermarkets and other food retailers by Black women in an urban US setting.

Public health interventions to increase supermarket access assume that shopping in supermarkets is associated with healthier food purchases compared to other store types. To test this assumption, we compared purchasing patterns by store-type for certain higher-calorie, less healthy foods (HCF) and lower-calorie, healthier foods (LCF) in a sample of 35 black women household shoppers in Philadelphia, PA. Data analyzed were from 450 food shopping receipts collected by these shoppers over four-week periods in 2012. We compared the likelihood of purchasing the HCF (sugar-sweetened beverages, sweet/salty snacks, and grain-based snacks) and LCF (low-fat dairy, fruits, and vegetables) at full-service supermarkets and six other types of food retailers, using generalized estimating equations. Thirty-seven percent of participants had household incomes at or below the poverty line, and 54% had a BMI >30. Participants shopped primarily at full-service supermarkets (55%) or discount/limited assortment supermarkets (22%), making an average of 11 shopping trips over a 4-week period and spending mean (SD) of $350 ($222). Of full-service supermarket receipts, 64% included at least one HCF item and 58% at least one LCF. Most trips including HCF (58%) and LCF (60%) expenditures were to full-service or discount/limited assortment supermarkets rather than smaller stores. Spending a greater percent of total dollars in full-service supermarkets was associated with spending more on HCF (p = 0.03) but not LCF items (p = 0.26). These findings in black women suggest a need for more attention to supermarket interventions that change retailing practices and/or consumer shopping behaviors related to foods in the HCF categories examined.

TopPI: An efficient algorithm for item-centric mining

In this paper, we introduce item-centric mining, a new semantics for mining long-tailed datasets. Our algorithm, TopPI, finds for each item its top-k most frequent closed itemsets. While most mining algorithms focus on the globally most frequent itemsets, TopPI guarantees that each item is represented in the results, regardless of its frequency in the database.TopPI allows users to efficiently explore Web data, answering questions such as “what are the k most common sets of songs downloaded together with the ones of my favorite artist?”. When processing retail data consisting of 55 million supermarket receipts, TopPI finds the itemset “milk, puff pastry” that appears 10,315 times, but also “frangipane, puff pastry” and “nori seaweed, wasabi, sushi rice” that occur only 1120 and 163 times, respectively. Our experiments with analysts from the marketing department of our retail partner demonstrate that item-centric mining discover valuable itemsets. We also show that TopPI can serve as a building-block to approximate complex itemset ranking measures such as the p-value.Thanks to efficient enumeration and pruning strategies, TopPI avoids the search space explosion induced by mining low support itemsets. We show how TopPI can be parallelized on multi-cores and distributed on Hadoop clusters. Our experiments on datasets with different characteristics show the superiority of TopPI when compared to standard top-k solutions, and to Parallel FP-Growth, its closest competitor.

Socio-demographic differences in supermarket shopper efficiency

Significance of the research paperTime is one of the resources shoppers bring to a store (along with money). Enabling shoppers to complete their grocery shopping more efficiently, that is to spend less time to buy the desired number of items, could result in higher shopper satisfaction and continued patronage. This research proposes a novel way of measuring shopper efficiency by distinguishing the “fixed” vs “per item” times for a grocery trip. We then analyse the differences in shopping efficiency across different sub-groups offering insights into shopper efficiency heterogeneity and benchmarks. Research methodologyWe collected data from 1176 shoppers across three Australian supermarkets in 2014 using systematic sampling for entry/exit interviews and objectively recorded time using supermarket receipts and entry time stamps. We used linear regression to model the “fixed” and “per item” times, while ANCOVA analysis provided statistical confirmation of observed differences across the sub-groups. OutcomesThe results revealed females were more efficient than males on a “per item” basis, while males had shorter “fixed” times associated with entry, navigation and checking out. Older shoppers were less efficient than younger shoppers. Unemployed respondents tended to spend more time in-store and were less efficient than employed shoppers. There was also a difference between part- and full-time employees. Shopping efficiency in peak and off peak periods was not significantly different. Contrary to the assumption in popular media that weekend shopping is more time consuming and hence inefficient, we found that weekend shopping is no less efficient than weekday trips. LimitationsOur approach assumes that shopper efficiency stays constant across the trip. The data did not allow testing of interactions between factors. Future research should also consider other attributes such as shopping list use, presence of others, including children, and familiarity with the store. ImplicationsWe present a novel approach in measuring shopper efficiency that splits the time in-store across “fixed” and “per item” times, associated with different shopper tasks (navigating and checking out vs choosing and buying). This split allows for a deeper understanding of where and how retailers can make shopping more efficient for their consumers, thus improving the overall in-store experience and outcomes. The identified differences in efficiencies across sub-groups have important implications for benchmarking and comparison of the performance of different stores, as these will be influenced not only by different times of the day and days of the week, but also by differences in the make-up of the customer base.

Feasibility of a Healthy Trolley Index to assess dietary quality of the household food supply.

Supermarket receipts have the potential to provide prospective, objective information about the household food supply. The aim of this study was to develop an index to estimate population diet quality using food purchase data. Supermarket receipt data of 1 month were available for 836 adults from a corporate office of a large retail chain. Participants were aged 19-65 years (mean 37·6 (sd 9·3) years), 56 % were female and 63 % were overweight or obese. A scoring system (Healthy Trolley Index (HETI)) was developed to compare food expenditure with the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. Monthly expenditure per food group, as a proportion of total food expenditure, was compared with food group recommendations, and a HETI score was calculated to estimate overall compliance with guidelines. Participants spent the greatest proportion on discretionary foods, which are high in fat/sugar (34·8 %), followed by meat including beef and chicken (17·0 %), fresh and frozen vegetables (13·5 %) and dairy foods (11·3 %). The average HETI score ranged from 22·6 to 93·1 (out of 100, mean 58·8 (sd 10·9)). There was a stepwise decrease in expenditure on discretionary foods by increasing HETI quintile, whereas expenditure on fruit and vegetables increased with HETI quintile (P<0·001). The HETI score was lower in obese compared with normal-weight participants (55·9 v. 60·3; P<0·01). Obese participants spent more on discretionary foods (38·3 v. 32·7 %; P<0·01) and less on fruits and vegetables (19·3 v. 22·2 %; P<0·01). The HETI may be a useful tool to describe supermarket purchasing patterns and quality of the household food supply with application for consumer feedback to assist improved quality of foods purchased.

The Patient Diarist in the Digital Age

The Patient Diarist in the Digital Age

Bisphenol A in supermarket receipts and its exposure to human in Shenzhen, China

Paper receipt has been documented as one major source of bisphenol A (BPA) for human exposure but little has been done by researchers to elaborate the potential health risk caused by handling paper receipt up to date. In the present study, BPA was analyzed in 42 supermarket receipts collected from Shenzhen, China. BPA was detected in all samples at concentrations ranging from 2.58 to 14.7mgg−1. In most cases, the total amount of BPA on the receipt was at least one thousand times the amount found in the epoxy lining of a food can, another controversial use of the chemical. The estimated daily intakes (EDI) of BPA via handling of supermarket receipt ranged from 2 to 347μgday−1 (mean, 40.4μgday−1) for a supermarket cashier and from 0.24 to 3.98μgday−1 (mean, 0.69μgday−1) for general population. Based on the cumulative probability distribution of the calculated daily exposure to BPA via handling supermarket receipt, the EDI at the 0.1th and 1th percentile for supermarket cashier and general population, were already larger than 100ng (kgbw)−1day−1, while at the 0.2th and 71th percentile, the EDI for both populations reached 1000ng (kgbw)−1day−1. Considering the adverse endocrine disruptive effects of BPA and the dosage exposure level (from tens to hundreds ng (kgbw)−1day−1), human exposure to BPA in Shenzhen deserves more attention. Sensitivity analysis result showed that the handling time and frequency of supermarket receipts are the most important variables that contributed to most of the total variance of exposure.

Guide to health: Nutrition and physical activity outcomes of a group-randomized trial of an internet-based intervention in churches

Theory-based interventions accessible to large groups of people are needed to induce favorable shifts in health behaviors and body weight. The aim was to assess nutrition; physical activity; and, secondarily, body weight in the tailored, social cognitive Guide to Health (GTH) Internet intervention delivered in churches. Participants (N = 1,071; 33% male, 23% African American, 57% with body mass index > or = 25, 60% sedentary, Mdn age = 53 years) within 14 Baptist or United Methodist churches were randomized to the GTH intervention only (GTH-Only; 5 churches), with church-based supports (GTH-Plus; 5 churches), or to a waitlist (control; 4 churches). Verified pedometer step counts, measured body weight, fat, fiber, and fruit and vegetable (F&V) servings from food frequency and supermarket receipts were collected at pretest, posttest (7 months after pretest), and follow-up (16 months after pretest). Participants in GTH-Only increased F&V at post (approximately 1.50 servings) compared to control (approximately 0.50 servings; p = .005) and at follow-up (approximately 1.20 vs. approximately 0.50 servings; p m = .038) and increased fiber at post (approximately 3.00 g) compared to control (approximately 1.5 g; p = .006) and follow-up (approximately 3.00 g vs. approximately 2.00 g; p = .040). GTH-Plus participants compared to control increased steps at post (approximately 1,500 steps/day vs. approximately 400 steps/day; p = .050) and follow-up (approximately 1,000 steps/day vs. approximately - 50 steps/day; p = .010), increased F&V at post (approximately 1.5 servings; p = .007) and follow-up (approximately 1.3 servings; p = .014), increased fiber at post (approximately 3.00A g; p = .013), and follow-up (approximately 3.00; p = .050) and decreased weight at post (approximately - 0.30 kg vs. approximately + 0.60 kg; p = .030). Compared to control, both GTH treatments improved nutrition at posttest, but church supports improved physical activity and nutrition at posttest and follow-up, suggesting environmental supports may improve Internet-based interventions.

Use of supermarket receipts to estimate energy and fat content of food purchased by lean and overweight families

The aim of this study was to compare the energy and fat content of food purchased for home consumption by households comprising mainly overweight individuals (OH), with those comprising mainly lean individuals (LH). 214 supermarket shoppers and their household were recruited from a Tesco supermarket in Leeds (UK). Households collected supermarket receipts and completed a shopping diary for 28-days, and each member of the household completed a 4-day food record. OH purchased food higher in fat (38% total energy from fat) than LH, (34.9%: p=0.001) and they purchased more energy and fat per adult equivalent, per day than LH (10.05 MJ compared to 9.15 MJ: p=0.01 and 103 g compared to 86 g: p=0.001). Households were 15% more likely to be classified as OH for each additional MJ of energy purchased per person, per day, after adjusting for number of children, household size, age, sex and social class. It was concluded that food purchasing behaviour may be linked to the prevalence of obesity in households who shop at supermarkets.

The use of supermarket till receipts to determine the fat and energy intake in a UK population.

To validate the use of supermarket receipts as an index of fat and energy intake in a population that buys most of its food from supermarkets. Cross-sectional, prospective dietary survey - feasibility study. Households situated within a 20-mile radius of a large (Tesco) supermarket in Leeds. Two hundred and fourteen households who spend >or=60% of their food purse in (Tesco and other) supermarkets. Mean daily household purchase of fat, energy and percentage energy from fat contained in food from supermarkets were 185 g, 19.2 MJ and 35.9%. Mean daily household intakes of fat and energy were 190 g and 20.7 MJ, and 35% of energy was derived from fat. Mean household size was 2.4 persons. The association between the amount of fat and energy purchased from supermarkets and the amount of fat and energy consumed by households was strong. 0.90 MJ (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.8-1.0) of energy were consumed for every 1 MJ purchased from supermarkets and 0.76 g (95% CI: 0.64-0.87) of fat were consumed for every 1 g of fat purchased. The results show a strong association between estimates of the intakes of fat and energy and percentage energy from fat using 4-day food diaries and 28 days of receipts, in populations who buy most of their food from supermarkets. They also show that the fat content of total food purchases from supermarkets is 35.9% energy from fat compared with 33% energy from fat recommended by the Department of Health. This preliminary research indicates the feasibility of and potential for utilising large quantities of readily available data generated from supermarket checkouts in dietary surveys.

The Effects of a Multimedia System in Supermarkets To Alter Shoppers' Food Purchases

A randomized-control test of a multimedia nutrition intervention-the Nutrition for a Lifetime System (NLS©)- utilized supermarket receipts to examine effects of NLS treatment on the daily per person nutritional content of participants' supermarket purchases. In regression analyses controlling for background variables, baseline purchases and trends toward increased purchasing, NLS treatment contributed to lower levels of total fat and to higher levels of total fiber and servings of fruits and vegetables at post-test. Redemption of NLS coupons contributed to greater decreases in fat and increases in servings of fruits and vegetables in users' purchases. Implications for future interventions promoting healthier food choices include tailoring program content and addressing broader lifestyle issues such as caloric intake and expenditure.