Food Prices and Blood Cholesterol

Ilya Rahkovsky and Christian Gregory

No 103566, 2011 Annual Meeting, July 24-26, 2011, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) cost Americans hundreds in billions of dollars. High cholesterol levels, which are closely related to diet habits, are a major contributor to CVD. In this paper we study whether changes in food prices are related to cholesterol levels and whether taxes or subsidies of particular foods would be effective in lowering cholesterol levels and, consequently, CVD costs. We find that prices of vegetables, processed foods, and whole milk and whole grains significantly affect the blood cholesterol levels. Having analyzed the costs and benefits of government interventions, we find that a subsidy of vegetables and whole grains would be the most efficient way to reduce CVD expenditures.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Health Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/103566/files/Cholesterol_AAEA_1_.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Food prices and blood cholesterol (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea11:103566

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.103566

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2011 Annual Meeting, July 24-26, 2011, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().