As people become wealthy, the type of food they consume tends to fundamentally change. Bennett’s law states that the budget share of starchy food staples, such as cereals and rice, tends to decline as household income rises, while the budget share of other foods, such as meat and vegetables, tends to rise. We argue that an important factor behind this shift is the extent to which the caloric value of the household’s diet meets their energy needs. When the caloric value of the diet is too low, the demand for calories is unsatiated and household’s will ‘eat to live’ and prefer to consume more calorie-dense staple foods, relative to other foods. If the calorie intake exceeds daily energy needs, satiated consumers will ‘live to eat’ and prefer to dedicate additional income to consuming more non-starchy foods that satisfy other wants, such as taste, novelty, or social status. Using Sri Lankan household data, we employ a finite mixture model (FMM) to analyze how satiated and unsatiated groups of consumers alter their calorie intake as income rises. We find empirical evidence that supports this conjecture and suggests that calorie satiation plays an important role in enabling food preferences to evolve as income rises. Policy implications are also discussed.

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PurposeWhile the monetary returns to education are well documented in the economics literature, the studies on non-monetary returns to education are scarce. The purpose of this study is to provide new insights into the non-market outcomes by exploring how education influences the food consumption choices of households and how these effects vary across different socio-economic groups using household-level calorie consumption data from Sri Lanka.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses two waves of Household Income and Expenditure Surveys – 2006/2007 and 2016. The methods adopted in analysing the data were descriptive statistics and the OLS regression model.FindingsThe empirical results show that educated poor households pay less per calorie compared to non-educated poor households, highlighting the role of education in improving the ability to make better food choices and manage household budgets more economically.Practical implicationsThis study informs policy-makers of the importance of education for formulating food and nutritional policies, which aim to raise the standard of living of resource-poor and vulnerable households in Sri Lanka as well as other developing countries with similar socio-economic conditions.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to explore the impact of education on the calorie consumption behaviour of people in the Sri Lankan context using nationwide household surveys.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0007