I’m pleased to share the results of a new, monthly survey of U.S. food consumers, we’ve named Consumer Food Insights. Consumer Food Insights is a monthly survey of more than 1,200 Americans from across the country, and it is the one of the products of the new Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability (CFDAS) that we launched this fall. With the survey, we seek to better understand changes in our national food environment and help businesses navigate their supply chains. Consumer Food Insights reveals where, how, and what food U.S. consumers bought and ate, with a focus on the implications for food systems at the national scale.
One set of questions aims to track self-reported sustainability of food purchases along five different dimensions.
There are many cool insights from the new survey, and you can read a summary of this month’s results here. Some highlights from this month’s survey include:
21% purchased their last groceries online
32% are waiting for their next paycheck to buy groceries again
16% are food insecure
46% ate home-cooked meals 4-6 times per week
11% identified as a vegetarian or vegan
25% unable to find a specific food product at the grocery store, most commonly listing items like chicken, beef, dairy, and bread products
87% said they’re happy with the food their diet
Food spending averaged $158/week.
Some of the additional measures we’ll be tracking every month are illustrated below.
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We will also be adding timely questions in response to ongoing events. This month, we added a question related to perceived causes of the increases in meat prices over the past year. Of note, market concentration in the meat packing industry has received national media attention in recent months. The Biden administration argues that industry consolidation is partly responsible for climbing grocery prices. What do consumers think? As indicated below, a relatively small percentage of respondents attributed high prices at the store to concentration and market power. A majority of respondents (51%) blamed COVID-related shutdowns for the increase in meat prices over the last year, but the top five causes also included labor shortages across supply chains, higher prices for animal feed, higher energy prices, and higher wages across supply chains.
There’s a lot more, including links to the underlying methodological details, available here.
Are you interested in additional analysis or adding questions to the survey? Consider joining our consortium of Consumer Food Insights members.
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P.S. This new survey effort is designed to complement the ongoing Meat Demand Monitor (MDM) that Glynn Tonsor is running at Kansas State, and it is a follow-up to and evolution of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) project I ran from 2013 to 2017.