Three Essays on American Consumption Habits of Whole Grains and Fruit Juices and the Impact of USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans

Given the rising national and personal healthcare costs, the health status of individuals has become a more salient issue. For decades, the USDA has attempted to influence consumers to make healthy food choices. Habits could either strengthen or counteract many of the dietary health objectives of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). I measured habit formation and the potential impact of present bias on specific consumer food and beverage choices. The actions of the USDA in the DGA were analyzed to determine their effect on improving consumer health outcomes across many socio-economic groups. Long term, time-consistent but diminishing habits were found for whole grains, other grains and sugar-sweetened beverage commodities and myopic preferences were shown for fruit juices. Spatial dependence was found for other grains and sugar-sweetened beverages with lower neighborhood effects after the 2010 DGA were published.;The Marshallian own-price elasticities were only statistically significantly different between the linear approximation to the Almost Ideal Demand System (LA/AIDS) and the linear approximation to the Exact Affine Stone Index (LA/EASI) model for tea/coffee, fruit juices and bottled water commodities. Engel curves generated from LA/EASI were more sophisticated than what could be modeled using a linear or quadratic relationship. Therefore, adding demographic variables into the LA/EASI model allowed the Engel curves to be more responsive to different income elasticities as income changed.