ABOLISH PRISON

Researchers call for action to protect prison staff and prisoners from hidden psychological harm

Overcrowded prisons are at breaking point. Now, researchers are sounding the alarm over a largely overlooked issue: moral injury

University of Bath

Overcrowded prisons in England and Wales are at breaking point, with self-harm at record levels. Now, researchers are sounding the alarm over a largely overlooked issue: moral injury, a psychological wound caused by witnessing or experiencing events that deeply conflict with a person’s values.

Experts from the University of Bath, UCL, King’s College London, Combat Stress, and NHS partners have published a report in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology urging the UK government to provide targeted mental health support for prison staff and prisoners.

The call to action comes amid stark Ministry of Justice figures showing that self-harm in prisons in England and Wales has reached its highest levels since records began in 2004. His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, has also warned of the devastating impact of overcrowding on prisoner wellbeing.

Recommendations for change

The researchers have outlined practical steps the UK government can take to tackle moral injury in prisons:

• Tailored mental health programs: Develop approaches that fit the limited resources available in prisons.
• Prevention strategies for staff: Introduce coping workshops, psychoeducation, and peer support networks to help staff manage stress.
• Enhanced role for chaplains: Train chaplains to support both staff and prisoners in dealing with moral injury.
• Creative therapies: Use group-based approaches like art or music therapy when one-on-one sessions aren’t possible.

Call to Action

Lead researcher Dr Victoria Williamson from the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath said:

Our findings reveal a serious gap in mental health support for both prison staff and prisoners. This isn’t just a personal issue for those affected—it’s a systemic problem that requires urgent action. If we address moral injury, we can improve mental health, reduce reoffending, and help create a more resilient prison workforce. Supporting staff and prisoners with effective interventions isn’t just ethical—it’s vital for the health of the prison system and our society.

Professor Dominic Murphy, from Combat Stress & King's College London said:

Whilst research in moral injury started within military populations, we know other groups are affected as well. The aim of this project is understand how we can use what we have learnt around the management of moral injury-related psychological distress to start to tackle these issues within staff working across the prison sector. We understand that the prison system is under intense resource pressure, but we believe that developing an intervention to support prison staff is worth the investment because it could reduce the significant mental health burden and also help to retain the workforce.

Andy Bell, Chief Executive of the Centre For Mental Health said:

Mental ill health is highly prevalent within the prison population, and prison staff are working in environments that put their wellbeing at risk too. Understanding the risk factors for poor mental health, such as moral injury, and taking steps to address them may help to address some of the causes and triggers of mental distress among people in the prison system.

Co-lead researcher Dr Danielle Lamb from supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North said:

To address these problems we plan to talk to people working in prisons, and NHS staff who support them and prisoners, and co-design an intervention to support them. We’ve planned this project in collaboration with current and former prison staff to make sure we tackle the most pressing issues in the most effective ways.

What Is Moral Injury?

Moral injury happens when people experience or witness events that clash with their core beliefs, leading to feelings of shame, guilt, or anger. Without the right support, this can develop into serious mental health problems.

While moral injury has been widely studied in professions like healthcare and the military, its impact on prison staff and prisoners has gone largely unrecognised—until now.

For prison staff, everyday duties can mean witnessing disturbing events like suicides or self-harm and being unable to intervene, or even using force against prisoners. This takes a heavy psychological toll, contributing to burnout and mental distress.

Prisoners are not immune either. Many struggle with deep guilt over their crimes—especially those committed under pressure or impaired judgment—adding another layer of emotional pain.

The overcrowded and understaffed prison system only makes matters worse. Rising violence, high staff turnover, and a lack of mental health resources leave both staff and prisoners vulnerable to repeated, morally injurious experiences.

Barriers to Support

The study highlights several obstacles that make it difficult to address moral injury in prisons:

• Trauma-focused therapies may not work—or could even harm those experiencing moral injury.
• Prisoners often avoid seeking help because of stigma, mistrust of healthcare providers, or fear of incriminating themselves.
• Staff, already overstretched and burned out, often fail to access the help they need.

This research was funded as part of the Three NIHR Research Schools Mental Health Programme and supported by the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North Thames.

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Journal

European Journal of Psychotraumatology

DOI

10.1080/20008066.2024.2445899 

Article Title

Experiences and impact of moral injury in prisons

Article Publication Date

13-Jan-2025

 

Study shows how households can cut energy costs

An experiment in Amsterdam suggests providing better information to people can help move them out of “energy poverty”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Many people around the globe are living in energy poverty, meaning they spend at least 8 percent of their annual household income on energy. Addressing this problem is not simple, but an experiment by MIT researchers shows that giving people better data about their energy use, plus some coaching on the subject, can lead them to substantially reduce their consumption and costs. 

The experiment, based in Amsterdam, resulted in households cutting their energy expenses in half, on aggregate — a savings big enough to move three-quarters of them out of energy poverty.

“Our energy coaching project as a whole showed a 75 percent success rate at alleviating energy poverty,” says Joseph Llewellyn, a researcher with MIT’s Senseable City Lab and co-author of a newly published paper detailing the experiment’s results. 

“Energy poverty afflicts families all over the world. With empirical evidence on which policies work, governments could focus their efforts more effectively,” says Fábio Duarte, associate director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab, and another co-author of the paper.

The paper, “Assessing the impact of energy coaching with smart technology interventions to alleviate energy poverty,” appears today in Nature Scientific Reports.

The authors are Llewellyn, who is also a researcher at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm; Titus Venverloo, a research fellow at the MIT Senseable City Lab and AMS; Fábio Duarte, who is also a principal researcher MIT’s Senseable City Lab; Carlo Ratti, director of the Senseable City Lab; Cecilia Katzeff; Fredrik Johansson; and Daniel Pargmanof the KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

The researchers developed the study after engaging with city officials in Amsterdam. In the Netherlands, about 550,000 households, or 7 percent of the population, are considered to be in energy poverty; in the European Union, that figure is about 50 million. In the U.S., separate research has shown that about three in 10 households report trouble paying energy bills. 

To conduct the experiment, the researchers ran two versions of an energy coaching intervention. In one version, 67 households received one report on their energy usage, along with coaching about how to increase energy efficiency. In the other version, 50 households received those things as well as a smart device giving them real-time updates on their energy consumption. (All households also received some modest energy-savings improvements at the outset, such as additional insulation.) 

Across the two groups, homes typically reduced monthly consumption of electricity by 33 percent and gas by 42 percent. They lowered their bills by 53 percent, on aggregate, and the percentage of income they spent on energy dropped from 10.1 percent to 5.3 percent.

What were these households doing differently? Some of the biggest behavioral changes included things such as only heating rooms that were in use and unplugging devices not being used. Both of those changes save energy, but their benefits were not always understood by residents before they received energy coaching.

“The range of energy literacy was quite wide from one home to the next,” Llewellyn says. “And when I went somewhere as an energy coach, it was never to moralize about energy use. I never said, ‘Oh, you’re using way too much.’ It was always working on it with the households, depending on what people need for their homes.”

Intriguingly, the homes receiving the small devices that displayed real-time energy data only tended to use them for three or four weeks following a coaching visit. After that, people seemed to lose interest in very frequent monitoring of their energy use. And yet, a few weeks of consulting the devices tended to be long enough to get people to change their habits in a lasting way. 

“Our research shows that smart devices need to be accompanied by a close understanding of what drives families to change their behaviors,” Venverloo says.

As the researchers acknowledge, working with consumers to reduce their energy consumption is just one way to help people escape energy poverty. Other “structural” factors that can help include lower energy prices and more energy-efficient buildings. 

On the latter note, the current paper has given rise to a new experiment Llewellyn is developing with Amsterdam officials, to examine the benefits of retrofitting residential buildings to lower energy costs. In that case, local policymakers are trying to work out how to fund the retrofitting in such a way that landlords do not simply pass those costs on to tenants.

“We don’t want a household to save money on their energy bills if it also means the rent increases, because then we’ve just displaced expenses from one item to another,” Llewellyn says. 

Households can also invest in products like better insulation themselves, for windows or heating components, although for low-income households, finding the money to pay for such things may not be trivial. That is especially the case, Llewellyn suggests, because energy costs can seem “invisible,” and a lower priority, than feeding and clothing a family. 

“It’s a big upfront cost for a household that does not have 100 Euros to spend,” Llewellyn says. Compared to paying for other necessities, he notes, “Energy is often the thing that tends to fall last on their list. Energy is always going to be this invisible thing that hides behind the walls, and it’s not easy to change that.” 

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Written by Peter Dizikes, MIT News

Paper: “Assessing the impact of energy coaching with smart technology interventions to alleviate energy poverty”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-80773-9

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41598-024-80773-9 

Article Title

“Assessing the impact of energy coaching with smart technology interventions to alleviate energy poverty”

Ukraine was a crossroads of human mobility until around 500 years ago

WHEN THE STATE WAS CREATED

 News Release 13-Jan-2025

Estonian Research Council

 

image: 

Scythian burial at the Skorobir necropolis in the fortified settlement of Bilski.

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Credit: Iryna Shramko

Ukraine was a crossroads of human mobility until around 500 years ago

The North Pontic region, which encompasses present-day Ukraine, was for centuries a crossroads of migration from multiple directions, connecting the vast Eurasian Steppe with Central Europe.

A study recently published in Science Advances uses ancient human remains to reveal the remarkably high genetic heterogeneity in the region during the last 3,500 years up to around 500 years ago. The study is led by Lehti Saag, a researcher at the University of Tartu Institute of Genomics (UT IG) and a former Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at University College London (UCL), alongside professor Mark Thomas from UCL and Pontus Skoglund from the Francis Crick Institute. The study was made possible by the resilience of Ukrainian researchers – second author Olga Utevska who is currently a MSCA4Ukraine fellow at UT IG, and numerous archaeologists still actively conducting excavations in Ukraine despite the war.

The analyses show that at the end of the Bronze Age, broad-scale ancestry proportions are similar to contemporary populations in the rest of Europe – a mixture of European hunter-gatherer, Anatolian early farmer and Steppe pastoralist ancestries – and these ancestry components have been present in the Ukraine region since then until today. However, from the Early Iron Age until the Middle Ages, the appearance of eastern nomads in the Pontic region became a regular occurrence. Their genetic composition varied from Steppe-like superimposed on the locals to high degrees of East Asian ancestry with minimal local admixture.

At the same time, individuals from the rest of the Ukrainian region had ancestry mostly from different regions in Europe. The palimpsest created by migration and population mixing in the Ukraine region will have contributed to the high genetic heterogeneity in geographically, culturally and socially homogeneous groups, with different genetic profiles present at the same site, at the same time and among individuals with the same archaeological association.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adr0695 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

North Pontic crossroads: Mobility in Ukraine from the Bronze Age to the early modern period

Article Publication Date

8-Jan-2025

 

Social media users more likely to invest in cryptocurrencies

YouTube, Reddit among platforms with highest crypto investment

University of Georgia

As social media grows, so too does awareness of cryptocurrencies. And hearing about them online may affect people’s behavior, according to a new study from the University of Georgia.

Cryptocurrencies, or “crypto,” are digital currencies used for both payment and investment. They’ve seen a surge in popularity over the past decade, especially as more people learn about them through social media.

The study found that about half of social media users surveyed have invested in digital currencies. And the more social media platforms a user was active on, the more likely they were to invest.

Meanwhile, only 10% of non-social media users had invested in crypto.

YouTube, Reddit, Twitter and Clubhouse users were the most likely to invest in digital currencies. Instagram users weren’t as keen on crypto.

The researchers believe this may be because longer YouTube videos and Reddit threads allow for more of discussion about crypto. Meanwhile, platforms like Instagram are more focused on visuals.

“A lot of people talk about cryptocurrency on social media and how popular it has become,” said Lu Fan, an associate professor for UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences. “There are a lot of celebrities talking about this. People are thinking, ‘Because my friends, families and the celebrities I admire all invest in that, maybe I should too.’"

The buzz around crypto drives investment patterns

The researchers found men and those with a higher risk tolerance were more likely to invest in crypto. On the other hand, people with a higher education level were less likely.

Age was also a factor. Older people were less likely to invest in crypto.

Interest in crypto growing rapidly

Interest in crypto has only been growing with time. In 2018, the National Financial Capability Study and Investor Survey found that only 15% of participants had invested in crypto. Just three years later, that number had almost doubled to 28%. The national study and survey measures demographics, investor behavior, and financial knowledge and capability.

The present publication relied on data from the 2021 version.

Crypto is also more prevalent in people’s minds, even if they don’t invest themselves. Less than 20% of participants said they’d thought about investing in 2018 compared to more than one in three in 2021.

Investing in digital currencies comes with risks, though. Crypto can be volatile and unpredictable.

“When people think about investing in crypto, they should not just simply follow the crowd,” said Fan. “They should also ask themselves, ‘Is it a good investment for me?’

“It may be suitable for some investors who have high risk tolerance, but it’s important to ask yourself, ‘Does cryptocurrency work for me? Can it help me achieve my financial goals?’”

Findings highlight an increased need for telling fact from opinion

Social media shouldn’t be the go-to source for people looking to invest in crypto, as it’s often a hotbed of misinformation and fraud, the researchers said.

Many social media users overestimate their investment knowledge. And younger investors can be particularly vulnerable to online scammers and bad advice.

“Our study showed that the younger adults are more likely to invest in crypto now, and they’re also the majority users of social media,” said Fan. “So, when serving those young adults who usually need to gain more financial literacy through life experience and age, there needs to be some guidance as well.”

The researchers encouraged policymakers to take this into account when developing guidelines and regulations for crypto. They also urged an increase in media literacy education to make it easier for people to spot authentic information.

The study was published in International Journal of Bank Marketing and was co-authored by Kyoung Tae Kim of the University of Alabama’s Department of Consumer Sciences.

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Journal

International Journal of Bank Marketing

DOI

10.1108/IJBM-12-2023-0665 

Article Title

Beyond the hashtags: social media usage and cryptocurrency investment

Who really benefits from economic development?

How profit often overshadows human rights

University of Portsmouth

A new study by the University of Portsmouth calls for human rights to be at the heart of any economic development. 

Published in the Business and Human Rights Journal, the study by Professor Leïla Choukroune and Dr Lorenzo Cotula critically examines how international investment deals and dispute settlements often overlook the voices of local communities and indigenous peoples, prioritising economic growth over inclusive and sustainable development.

The researchers highlight how international investment law predominantly supports a model of development centred on economic growth and market integration, sidelining alternative perspectives that emphasise cultural, environmental, and social sustainability.

Leïla Choukroune is Professor of International Economic Law and Director of the upcoming Global Justice and Rights Centre of Excellence. She says: “From Colombia to Peru, Nigeria to Indonesia, large investment projects have raised urgent questions about who really benefits from "development". These projects frequently cause harm to local communities, including environmental degradation, displacement, and human rights violations.”

Recent examples include:

• Colombia: The protection of the Paramos high-mountain ecosystems, vital for water production and biodiversity, faces challenges from mining interests.
• Peru: Indigenous leaders have been criminalised for protesting against extractive projects, as seen in the case of the Bear Creek mining investment.
• Nigeria: Oil spills and pollution from Shell have devastated local communities, leading to unprecedented global legal battles over corporate accountability.
• Indonesia: Communities have sought justice for human rights abuses tied to major corporations, such as ExxonMobil’s recent settlement in a long-running torture case.

Professor Choukroune explains: “By connecting human rights and development in immediate terms, ongoing discussions about the right to development can provide an arena to centre ‘peoples’ as the key actors in development processes. But this shift would also require ensuring that the wider frameworks of international economic law recognise and provide space for plural notions of development.”

The study aligns with the UN’s efforts to elevate the "right to development" by pushing for a legally binding treaty that prioritises equality, human rights, and respect for natural resources. This treaty seeks to shift the focus of development from nations to "peoples", ensuring that those most affected by investment projects - local communities and indigenous peoples - are included in the decision-making process.

Professor Choukroune says: “It is critical that any treaty agreed reflects the broader aspirations of local and indigenous communities, who often face environmental harm, land loss, and insufficient consultation. The international rules governing foreign investment embody a notion of development that tends to prioritise economic considerations, against the rights of ‘peoples’ who articulate development in different terms.”

The study emphasises the following critical areas:

• Balancing economic growth with local and cultural development for economic, environmental and social sustainability. 
• Recognising indigenous rights in large international investments such as free, prior, and informed consent.
• Creating legal frameworks that support diverse development visions.
• Supporting access to adequate and efficient remedies for local communities and all stakeholders involved in international investments. 

As global inequalities widen, the UK’s human rights performance will soon be reviewed by the United Nations. This highlights the pressing need to reconsider how development is defined and who benefits from it.

The research argues that integrating human rights into international economic law can pave the way for fairer, more sustainable, and inclusive outcomes, ensuring development works for all, especially the most vulnerable.

For more information on the UN's proposed treaty on the "right to development," visit UN OHCHR.

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Journal

Business and Human Rights Journal

DOI

10.1017/bhj.2024.22 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

‘Local Communities’ and the Development Conundrum: Where International Investment Law Meets Human Rights and Businesses

 

Study examines differences in strength by position among football players

'Big skill' players showed differences in strength, force, but not flexibility; could lead to improved training

University of Kansas

LAWRENCE — Even casual football watchers could tell you there are different body types based on the player’s position. Linemen are big with a lot of body mass, and wide receivers are smaller and faster, for example. But a new study from the University of Kansas is setting the stage to determine if there are more subtle differences in fitness and strength characteristics by position that are not obvious, even to the trained football eye.

If coaches and trainers could point to data that shows linebackers generally have higher upper body strength, while tight ends have a high level of flexibility or similar measures, that could lead to position-specific training and putting athletes in their most optimum positions to succeed. Quincy Johnson, assistant professor of health, sport & exercise science, led a study that used state-of-the-art technology to assess key performance indicators within a group of college football players that found significant differences in body type, muscular strength and power, though not flexibility, by position type.

Offensive and defensive linemen, “big skill” positions such as linebackers and tight ends and skill players such as quarterbacks, wide receivers and safeties were the focus of the study. Researchers conducted a battery of tests with 16 starters from a NCAA Division II football team. All were free of musculoskeletal injuries and had regularly taken part in strength and conditioning training.

“Even within the same sport you have different body types and different needs for the position they play,” Johnson said. “Speed, mobility, flexibility all play a part in your ability to play football. Strength and power also play a huge role. We found significant differences among position groups in muscular power, as well as muscular strength. However, we didn’t find a difference in flexibility.”

Players in the sample were separated into offensive and defensive groups and were tested for body composition, including height, body mass and lean body mass. Then, further key performance indicators like movement capacity, muscular strength and power were measured. Technology including markerless motion capture and force plates measured movement capacity during squats, strength via isometric mid-thigh pulls, power via jumping exercises and other similar measures.

As hypothesized, the researchers found significant differences in body composition, with linemen having more body mass than other big skill players. And the latter positions jumped higher and more efficiently transferred force during jumps, exhibiting different types of characteristics of athleticism between the positions. Movement capacity, however, did not prove to have significant differences by position.

Specific measures of muscular strength and power also varied between position groups, but measures of peak force did not, the researchers noted. That finding emphasizes the importance of developing absolute strength, they added.

Johnson, a former collegiate football player and strength and conditioning coach, described the study as a call to action. By showing that different body compositions, movement capacities and types of strength and power are scientifically measurable, it could set the stage for research that can maximize desired characteristics in the name of improving performance long-term. Further research is needed to determine how best to develop the necessary characteristics by position.

Written by Johnson, Yang Yang, Dimitrije Cabarkapa and Andrew Fry of KU; Shane Stock, Dalton Gleason, Kazuma Akehi, Dayton Sealey and Clay Frels of the University of Nebraska-Kearney; and Douglas Smith of Oklahoma State University, the study was published in The Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology.

“I hope to help answer questions coaches have and hopefully move the field in some new directions,” Johnson said. “The big question is, ‘Can we assess abilities in this group of athletes?’ Once we have this information, can we analyze it in a way that over time improves performance?”

Johnson, who began playing football at age 5 in his native Oklahoma, had questions about training camp when he reached the collegiate level, including why the first few and last few days of training camp seemed to be the most strenuous and taxing on the body. While he never suffered serious injuries, he saw teammates who did or quit the sport for various reasons. By bringing a sport science approach to such questions, he hopes to help athletes, coaches, trainers and others use data to answer those and others about how to maximize performance. Such data could contribute to training regimens designed specifically for defensive backs to reach their full potential or to help linemen stay on the field or avoid injuries, for example.

Future work will examine data from Division I football players and those in other sports as well.

The authors write that the findings can also help those beyond athletes and coaches, including strength and conditioning professionals, sport scientists, sports medicine professionals, nutritionists and registered dietitians.

Johnson’s research is part of the work by the Jayhawk Athletic Performance Laboratory, a member of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance. The alliance works to transform and improve human health through the understanding of peak performance. While the majority of understanding of human health comes from the study of disease, the research at KU and partners studies peak athletic performance to help people achieve optimal health and well-being.

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Journal

Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology

DOI

10.3390/jfmk10010019 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Key Performance Indicators for College American Football Starters: An Exploratory Study

Article Publication Date

13-Jan-2025

 

US Consumer Food Insights Report: Out-of-stock foods rate drops for second straight year

Statistic highlights fewer volatile events and food system resiliency since 2022

Purdue University

 

image: 

Share of Consumers Reporting an Out-of-stock Item in The Last 30 Days, Jan. 2022 - Dec. 2024.

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Credit: Purdue University's Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Consumers reported a 9.5% out-of-stock rate for foods in 2024. This figure dropped from 12.3% in 2023 and 19.3% in 2022, according to the December 2024 Consumer Food Insights Report (CFI).

The survey-based report out of Purdue University’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability(CFDAS) assesses food spending, consumer satisfaction and values, support of agricultural and food policies, and trust in information sources. Purdue experts conducted and evaluated the survey, which included 1,200 consumers across the U.S.

“Events such as the avian flu, new geopolitical conflicts, continued pandemic recovery and the 2022 spike in food inflation significantly impacted the food supply chain,” said the report’s lead author, Joseph Balagtas, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue and director of CFDAS.

“The decrease in the annual average stockout shows less volatility over the past year and highlights the resiliency of our food system.”

In its latest survey, CFDAS asked consumers about their diet plans for the new year. The new report also looks back on 2024 consumer trends, including out-of-stock trends and foods people have limited in their diets.

Almost half of American adults said they have a food or nutrition-related resolution going into 2025. Most resolutions focused on limiting or increasing the intake of foods such as sugar and vegetables, respectively. The data was disaggregated by self-reported general health: excellent/very good, good and fair/poor.

“Two-thirds of consumers with a resolution are motivated to improve their health and slightly less than half are motivated to lose weight or improve their appearance,” Balagtas said. “Consumers who are in excellent or very good health are more likely to be motivated for reasons unrelated to their own personal health.” These reasons include helping others with their health, gaining environmental consciousness, satisfying the wishes of family or friends, or trying something new.

Similar to last year’s findings, most consumers want to increase their intake of healthy food and drink, including fruits, vegetables and water. Fewer consumers plan to make any changes in their consumption of certain staple foods and beverages such as eggs, dairy, coffee and tea.

New questions last month also fall under the topic of health and diets as CFDAS researchers explored the use of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss and their impact on consumer food spending, preferences and satisfaction. GLP-1 drugs are typically used to treat health conditions such as diabetes but have become popular for weight loss.

Around 14% of respondents said they either have taken or currently take GLP-1 drugs. One of the intended effects of these drugs is to reduce appetite. Indeed, consumers report a decrease in the amount of food they purchase while taking the drugs. Previous research has shown this same trend in household food spending when at least one person in the household uses a GLP-1 drug. Consumers also report buying healthier foods and eating out less as a result of these drugs.

The sustainable food purchasing index returned to its historical average of 69/100 in December, said Elijah Bryant, a survey research analyst at CFDAS and a co-author of the report. “The index has remained stable across all months of the CFI, showing that sustainable consumer behavior has remained relatively the same over time,” Bryant said.

Consumers who said they were in excellent health tend to score higher on the index (73) than those who say their health is poor (63). “The largest difference between these groups comes in the nutrition subindicator, which reaffirms the correlation between food purchasing decisions that are considered healthy — such as avoiding empty calories and buying diverse foods — and personal health,” Bryant said.

Average annual food expenditure in 2024 was $193 per week, up from $187 per week in 2023 and $178 per week in 2022. With the increase in food prices over the last two years, consumers need to spend more at the grocery store for their usual basket of goods.

Consumer inflation expectations for the year ahead increased by .3 percentage points in December. The most recent report of the consumer price index estimates annual food inflation at 2.4%, also up 0.3 percentage points from the last Bureau of Labor Statistics report.

Food insecurity rose slightly in December to 14%. Food insecurity is highest among consumers of poor or fair health (26%), compared to consumers in good health (12%) or better (8%).

“This is likely a result of the correlation between income and health, as those who have greater incomes tend to have an easier time affording enough nutritionally adequate food,” Bryant said. The direction of this relationship can go both ways, as indicated by previous research.

“Those with very low incomes are more susceptible to food insecurity and are more likely to be in worse health. This can make working a job to earn enough income to buy good foods difficult, creating a negative feedback loop,” he said. Consumers in excellent or very good health also report checking food labels for nutrition facts, natural or clean labels, origin, ingredients, and how the food was produced more frequently than consumers in worse health.

The new survey further shows that the overall direction and magnitude of the average trust scores among the five least and most trusted sources of information on healthy and sustainable foods has wavered little over time. Fast food companies tend to score low on the index, while the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration and primary physicians score high.

“With the upcoming change in presidential administrations in 2025, it will be interesting to see how or if consumer trust in these government organizations shifts at all or if consumers remain confident in the information from these sources, many of which will likely be under new leadership in the coming months,” Bryant said.

The Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability is part of Purdue’s Next Moves in agriculture and food systems and uses innovative data analysis shared through user-friendly platforms to improve the food system. In addition to the Consumer Food Insights Report, the center offers a portfolio of online dashboards.

About Purdue Agriculture

Purdue University’s College of Agriculture is one of the world’s leading colleges of agricultural, food, life and natural resource sciences. The college is committed to preparing students to make a difference in whatever careers they pursue; stretching the frontiers of science to discover solutions to some of our most pressing global, regional and local challenges; and, through Purdue Extension and other engagement programs, educating the people of Indiana, the nation and the world to improve their lives and livelihoods. To learn more about Purdue Agriculture, visit this site.

About Purdue University  

Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.

Writer: Steve Koppes

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Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Consumer Food Insights Report December 2024

Article Publication Date

13-Jan-2025