| This research extends the existing literature on food choice and diet quality by exploring diet quality from multiple perspectives. I aim to understand the relationship between time constraints and diet quality and, in particular, how the healthfulness of low-income household food purchases is influenced by time constraints. I further examine the relationship between self-rated and actual diet quality: previous research finds that consumers overestimate their diet quality. This dissertation uses a new dataset sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture (FoodAPS), which contains nationally representative data on the food purchasing habits of almost 5,000 households.;The first paper examines whether the self-reported diet quality of household food shoppers is consistent with the actual nutritional quality of their food purchases, using multivariate models. I find that households reporting at least "very good" diet status are fairly accurate in assessing their own diet quality, as measured by the Healthy Eating Index-2010. This result follows from a statistically significant odds ratio of falling into a higher HEI category than households reporting "good" or worse diet status.;The second paper examines the relationship between time constraints and diet quality, by estimating the relationship between time constraints and the nutritional quality of food purchases using an econometric model. Perceptions of being time-constrained were associated with a lower estimated HEI-2010 score. Further analysis suggested that although lower income households are likely to feel time pressure, they are less likely than higher income households to alter their purchasing behaviors in response to time stress.;The third paper examines the diet quality, measured in three ways, of convenience food types purchased at the store, and their variation by income. I conduct an ANOVA to test for equality of measures across groups and for differences between low-income and higher income households. Ready-to-eat and canned foods generally rank more healthy and frozen foods generally rank less healthy across measures, though packaged foods and salty snack rankings are more inconsistent. Differences in quality among convenience food types and differences in ranking across measures suggest the importance of examining the quality of different types of convenience foods at the store. |
