Impact of Recipe Cards and Nutrition Tips on Produce Selection in a Food Pre-Ordering Program

ABSTRACT

We conducted a natural field experiment to estimate the impact of including recipes and nutrition tips in a monthly food-box pre-ordering program on produce orders. Customers were randomized at order pickup to receive recipes and nutrition tips (n = 125), or not (n = 120), and received reminder calls to place next month’s order. We observed type(s) and number of boxes ordered. Customers receiving recipes and nutrition tips allocated significantly more (15.7%) of their next month’s purchase to fruit (P = 0.04). Customers (33.3%) in this intervention group also increased the amount of produce in their next month’s order (P = 0.01) compared to the control group (15.8%).

KEYWORDS:

• Field experiment
• recipe cards
• food preferences
• fruit
• vegetables
• food pre-ordering
• nutrition tips

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author. The data are not available publicly due to containing sales data that could compromise the privacy of Top Box Foods NFP.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the USDA-ERS under Contract # 58-5000-5-0103, and by the Produce for Better Health Foundation’s 2015-2016 Fruit and Vegetable Marketing Research Grant Program. We thank Shreemayi Samujjwala for technical editing expertise. We also thank Rui Chen, Sara Kanizsai and Jonathan Wittig for assistance with study implementation, and Rui Chen and Harry Kosowsky for valuable research and technical assistance. The findings and conclusions in this publication are those of the authors and should not be construed to represent any official US Department of Agriculture or US Government determination or policy; United States Department of Agriculture - Economic Research Service [Contract # 58-5000-5-0103]