Nutritional Transition, Demand for a Healthy Diet and the Role of Education : An Analysis Using Almost Ideal Demand System

Nutritional transition - the changes in food consumption patterns from a healthy diet to an unhealthy diet, is identified as one of the leading causes of rising Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Law and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). Using food demand elasticities, estimated through the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS), we aim to assess those changes in food consumption behaviour of two periods that underwent significant economic and social changes contributing to speeding the nutritional transition. Further, we identify how education modifies those consumption behaviours and analyse the disparity in the diet of households having individuals with diabetesone of the most prominent diet-related diseases. We use data from household income and expenditure surveys in Sri Lanka in 2006 and 2016. Our results show that households increase their consumption of both healthy and unhealthy food with growing income, partially confirming the nutritional transition. We find that education increases the demand for healthy food with income increase, but it does not decrease unhealthy food demand. Further, we show that diabetic people only slightly change their food choice towards a healthier diet, however, education plays a significant role in leading their food consumption towards a healthier diet. The study highlights important policy implications for improving people’s diets and, thus, health. People in LMICs face the dilemma of using their increasing income towards healthy consumption while counterbalancing unhealthy consumption. Not only investing in education, but a collaboration between public health policymakers and education experts to incorporate diet-related education into the formal education system is required to control the risk factors of NCD prevalence. Government can effectively encourage healthy consumption while discouraging unhealthy ones by designing pricing policies - taxing unhealthy food and providing subsidies for healthy food