Researcher Figures Out How To Gather Grocery Checkout Data To Target Public Health Interventions

A researcher in Canada has devised a way to gather consumer purchase data from grocery store checkouts that public health agencies can use to determine where people tend to eat unhealthy foods and perhaps focus diet improvement interventions. It’s a public health issue because the direct health costs of diseases associated with obesity total $1.8 billion – a “huge toll both on lives and public finances”. Data gathered from store scanners in Montreal in 2008 and 2010 showed, for example, that for each $10,000 decrease in median personal income, there was a fivefold increase in estimated monthly sales of soft drinks.