Mexican households’ food shopping patterns in 2015: analysis following nonessential food and sugary beverage taxes

Abstract

Objective: To examine patterns of taxed and untaxed food and beverage shopping across store types after Mexico’s sugary drink and non-essential food taxes, the nutritional quality of these patterns and the socio-economic characteristics associated with them. Design: We performed k-means cluster analyses using households’ percentage of food and beverage purchases from each store type (i.e. convenience stores, traditional shops (e.g. bodegas, tiendas, mom-and-pop shops), supermarkets, wholesalers and others). We calculated adjusted mean proportions of taxed and untaxed products (ml or g/capita per d) purchased in each pattern. We studied the associations between households’ SES and shopping patterns using multinomial logistic regressions. Within shopping patterns, we obtained mean volumes and proportions of taxed and untaxed food and beverage subgroups and calculated the proportion of products purchased at each store type. Setting: Mexico. Participants: Urban Mexican households (n 5493) from the Nielsen Mexico Consumer Panel Survey 2015. Results: We found four beverage shopping patterns and three food shopping patterns, driven by the store type where most purchases were made. For beverages, 48 % of households were clustered in the Traditional pattern and purchased the highest proportion of taxed beverages. Low-SES households had the highest probability of clustering in the Traditional beverage shopping pattern. For foods, 35 % of households were clustered into the Supermarket pattern. High-SES households had the highest probability of clustering in the Supermarket food shopping pattern. Conclusions: The combination of store types where Mexican households purchase packaged foods and beverages varies. However, households in all shopping patterns and SES purchase taxed beverages mainly at traditional stores. Store-level strategies should be developed to intervene on traditional stores to improve the healthfulness of purchases.

Food environment solutions for childhood obesity in Latin America and among Latinos living in the United States

“… 149 , 150 , 151 For instance, changing placement of healthy and unhealthy foods, banning ultra‐processed foods from check out and placing them out of the reach of children, along with changes in promotional strategies of ultra‐processed foods are promising strategies but lack sufficient real‐world testing. 152 More recently, researchers are employing innovative methods, such as the use of eye‐tracking technology, 150 , 151 consumer panels, 155 and experiments using virtual 156 and real‐life store labs to better understand children and caregivers' real‐world shopping behaviors and the uniqueness of stores that serve Latino populations.…”

Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes and Population Health Outcomes

“…Third, the authors leveraged variations in price changes of soda to examine associations of tax-induced price changes with weight, helping overcome the challenge of selecting a geographic control for a national-level policy. The authors also captured soda prices from a variety of store types (eg, street stalls, grocery stores) to better reflect prices in urban areas, where most taxed beverages are purchased from smaller stores . Further, the results were consistent in robustness checks.…”

Food and beverage purchases at formal and informal outlets in Mexico

“…While we are aware that clear-cut definitions of informality are ad hoc, we decided to include this approach since there is little evidence of Mexicans' food purchasing patterns in these outlets. Thus, we categorized public markets, small neighborhood stores, specialty stores and low-budget restaurants as mixed food and beverage outlets since many of these outlets are small, family-owned businesses and could be either formal or informal outlets (Table 1) (18,(23)(24)(25) .…”

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