Beliefs about Beef vs. Plant-Based, Cell-Cultured, and Lab Grown Alternatives

The July 2023 edition of the Consumer Food Insights survey is now out. I want to draw attention to one set of questions we added that delved into consumers’ beliefs about beef vs. plant-based, cell-cultured, and lab grown alternatives. Each respondent was only asked one set of these questions. Cell-cultured and lab-grown refer to the same thing, but we were curious if the the alternative labeling produced a different set of beliefs.

By and large, respondents have positive perceptions of beef. Animal welfare is the only characteristic which consumers rated more positively than beef. The specific wording on this item was “Animal Welfare (if consuming the product improves overall animal well-being in the country).” Interestingly, “cell cultured” was not substantively different than “lab grown”; the later actually produced more positive views on the alternative in some dimensions such as environment and animal welfare. I say “interesting” because the start-ups seem to prefer “cell cultured” over “lab grown.”

This is the last edition of Consumer Food Insights I will be directly leading. I look forward to see the excellent work continue from the team at the Center for Food Demand Analysis.

Consumer Food Insights - May 2023

The May 2023 edition of our monthly Consumer Food Insights survey is now out.

A few highlights:

• Consumer food spending is at its highest level since our survey began in January 2022.

• Food insecurity ticked up to 16%.

• There has been a decline in the length of time individuals report being on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (conditional on being in the program)

• Some good news: we continue to see a steady decline in the share of consumers who report not being able to find items they wish to buy at the grocery store. That is, reported stock-out rates are declining.

• We compared the spending and buying behavior of households who spend more vs. less on food on a per-person basis.

There’s a lot more in the report.

Consumer Food Insights - April 2023

The latest edition of our monthly Consumer Food Insights survey is now out. They report conveys the results of the survey conducted in the latter part of April 2023. Here are some of the main findings.

• 55% of consumers shopped at a dollar store in the past 30 days

  • Most commonly (30%+) bought snack foods, candy, beverages

  • About 25% did not purchase food

  • Consumers tend to live closer to a dollar store than they do to the place they do most of their grocery shopping

  • About half of consumers said they’d be more likely to shop at a dollar store if it had a more full service grocery section that sold, e.g., fresh fruits and veggies

• This month, we asked how often people purchased different types of organic foods (see the figure above).  The most commonly bout organic food items were organic vegetables and organic fruits, but even for this just over 30% said they often or always bought organic.  The least common categories for organic purchase was pasta, rice, and cereal, bread, and canned goods; for these almost 60% said they never or rarely buy organic.

• In terms of our regular tracking questions, we find the following.

  • Total food spending is up 7% year over year

  • Consumers report lower rates of food price increases than they have in previous months.

  • Virtually no change in food insecurity.

• We decomposed many of our survey results by people that were high, low, or very low in terms of food insecurity status. Compared to food secure households, households experiencing food insecurity …

  • had lower sustainable food purchase scores,

  • placed more weight on affordability when buying food,

  • were much more likely to be on SNAP and wait to buy groceries or eat out until their next paycheck,

  • were less likely to be happy with their diets and overall lives (although they remained fairly happy overall), and

  • less likely to trust food-related information from FDA and USDA.

Consumer Food Insights - March 2023

The latest edition of our monthly Consumer Food Insights survey is now out.

We continue to see a fall both in the share of consumers who say they can’t find certain foods when shopping (i.e., stock-out rates are falling; see also my post last week on new research about stock-outs) and who are buying groceries online.

This month, we asked some questions about trust and importance of different food labels. Consumers said the most important labels were expiration date, ingredient list, and nutrition facts panel; the lase important were gluten free claims and religious certifications. Claims about “natural” and “healthy” were the least trusted.

We’ve been tracking trust in information about food from different organizations. In the past, we explicitly avoided listing Purdue, but we had been asking about two other universities: Harvard and Ohio State University (OSU). This month, we replaced OSU with Purdue. Purdue scored a +4, while OSU averaged -4 and Harvard averaged 7 over the past year. I’m not sure whether this means people think Purdue is more trustworthy than OSU, or that people are displaying some social desirability bias, since respondents know Purdue researchers are conducted the survey.

This month, we we broke down our results by employment status, comparing those consumers who are working age and retirement age, i.e., not working (ages 18-64), working (ages 18-64), working (ages 65+), and retired (ages 65+). We find, for example, that 27% of working age adults without a job experienced food insecurity in the last year compared to 12% among those with a job.

For these, and other results, check out the full report here.

Consumer Food Insights - February 2023

The results of the latest Consumer Food Insights (CFI) from the Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability (CFDAS) at Purdue are now out.

In addition to our typical tracking questions, this month we asked whether consumers were expecting (or had already received) a tax refund and, if so, how they expected to spend it. We also asked a variety of questions related to perceptions of fresh vs. frozen foods. We also took a deep dive into how our food spending and preferences varied by religious affiliations and beliefs. Below are a couple screenshots of key results. Read the whole report for much, much more.

So far, 19% report receiving a tax refund, while another 38% say they expect a refund. The majority (50%) intend to save their refund, while a third (32%) plan to pay down debt. On average, Americans expect to receive about $1,940 in tax refund this year.

Planned Uses of 2023 Tax Refunds

Here are a few results related to beliefs about frozen vs. fresh food.

Finally, here’s an area were we note non-trivial differences across people with different faiths.