COVID lockdowns left a permanent 'junk food scar' on what families with kids buy at the grocery store.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
Short-Run Shifts, Limited Persistence: Diet Quality in Grocery Purchases under COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders
SSRN · 6450755
The Takeaway
While most households' diets eventually returned to pre-pandemic levels after routines normalized, families with children maintained significantly higher levels of unhealthy grocery purchases. This suggests that brief societal disruptions can permanently 'bake in' unhealthy consumption habits for the next generation.
From the abstract
Disruptions to daily routines can profoundly shape consumption behavior, yet little is known about how such shocks affect household diet quality. We study how COVID-19 stay-at-home (SaH) orders altered the nutritional composition of grocery purchases in the United States. Using nationally representative NielsenIQ Consumer Panel data (2019–2021) linked to the USDA Food Composition Database, we construct a nutrient-based quality index (RRR) for over 3.8 million products and estimate difference-in-