Overcoming budget, availability, and attention constraints to healthy diets in Tanzania

This study is motivated by the problem of rapid rise in overweight, obesity, and non-communicable diseases in different parts of the World. The study assumes that if healthy food will also be conveniently available at affordable prices, chances are that food consumers will resort to eating healthier diets and minimize the consumption of unhealthy foods. The thrust of the research therefore is to test and evaluate the impact of price discounts on food consumption.
The first research problem is to understand the food environment in Dar es Salaam. This first component of the study involves two major parts namely desk study and fieldwork. The desk study involves making an in-depth understanding of situation analysis of food and nutrition in Tanzania and key dynamics around the world. The desk study involves also understanding the evolution of Tanzania policy in addressing the problem of hunger and malnutrition. The second component of the food environment study involves studying the kinds of unhealthy foods consumed in Dar es Salaam. This part of the study involves conducting interviews with food vendors and consumers of food with a purpose of understanding costs and non-cost barriers hindering households from the consumption of healthy foods. The fieldwork conducted for this component of the study also involved estimating price elasticities of demand for some heathy food options. This exercise is meant for collecting relevant data for informing the design of subsequent stages of the research especially the randomized control trial.
The second component of the research is a preference (discrete) choice experiment to learn about preferred attributes of food by consumers. The third component is a randomized control trial to test the effect of food subsidy program on consumption of healthy diets in the study location.