full title: 

“The Formation and malleabilityof Dietary Habits: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Low Income families”

Abstract

This paper evaluates with a fieldexperiment the extent to which dietary habits are malleable early on inchildhood and later in life. We evaluate two treatments – one that targets whatpeople eat, the other that targets how people eat. 285 low incomefamilies with young children were recruited and assigned either to a controlgroup or one of two treatments, each of them lasting for 12 consecutive weeks.In the first treatment, families received food groceries at home for free for12 weeks and were asked to prepare five specific healthy meals per week. In thesecond treatment, families were simply asked to reduce snacking and eat atregular times. We collected a range of measures of food preferences, dietaryintake, as well as  BMI and biomarkers based on blood samples. We findsome evidence that children’s preferences have been affected by bothtreatments, and we find that their BMI distribution shifted significantlyrelative to the control group, i.e. they became relatively “thinner”. On theother hand, we find little evidence of any effects on adults and these effectsare not consistent with adopting a healthier diet. We conclude that exposure toa healthy diet and regularity of food intake possibly play a role in shapingdietary habits, but influencing dietary choices in the short and long runremains a major challenge.