If more and more meat eaters are entering the market as it matures, then PBM is reaching those who are more likely to replace meat in their diet. Seeing evidence of PBM going mainstream the meat eaters would be encouraging for future growth. In order to test how the market of first time buyers is changing in a comparable way to buy and rebuy, I created a 1/0 variable of early and late. The cut off is set at April 29th, 2019 and while this may seem partly arbitrary, it closely matches when the public became much more aware of PBM. This was close to when Burger King first began running national ads for its Impossible Whopper, which attracted an unprecidented amount of attention for PBM. In addition, by this time, PBM had been available in all stores across this chain of grocery stores for at least 6 months, but this week marked the begining of a nationwide increase in demand for PBM in this grocery chain. We can see both of these trends in figure 1.1. On the left is a Google Trends search of Plant Based Meat for 2017 to 2019, raspberry container growing showing the large spikes in interest in the spring of 2019. On the left, I show the quantity of Plant Based Meat sold per store per week.
At the beginning, sales per store are high, but that may reflect the limited geographies that the item was made available in. As more and more stores started selling PBM, sales per store leveled out at a much lower level, until the spring of 2019, when sales began to rise again as nationwide interest in PBM picked up. In the next section, I will use week of first purchase as an alternate that can pick up more variation. Table 1.1 displays all the covariables discussed and how they relate to the three variables of interest, as well as t stats and p values. With such large sample sizes, the covariates on the variables of interest are unsurprisingly almost always statistically different between the two groups of households. Of particular interest for the buy / no-buy groups, those who bought PBM were more likely to be younger, to have a higher income, and to be shopping in a more Clinton heavy area. The extra variables created from the pre-period market basket are also interesting, if not completely surprising. While households were more likely to be “low meat” households that spent less than 5% of their pre-period budget on meat, the difference was only a half percentage point. This supports the often repeated fact that PBM customers also buy meat. However, they still bought less meat, with a larger gap in their average market basket raw percent devoted to meat in the pre period. In addition, buyers of PBM bought about 3 times as much veggie burgers and tofu.
So while PBM buyers did, on average, also buy meat, they bought less of it, and also bought a lot more traditional meat replacements. Because the number of buyers of PBM is oversampled, I cannot say what percent of all customers have bought it at least once. The early/late comparison and rebuyers in the second and third section of table 1.1 only include those who bought PBM once, so the difference in these groups would not necessarily be the same as between the buyers and no buyers. The demographics of rebuyers were only slightly different: skewing slightly younger and shopping in slightly more Clinton voting areas. However, rebuyers were more likely to be “low meat” purchasers and had spent more on traditional replacements and a little less on meat in the pre-period. That seems to infer that PBM was more likely to catch on with customers who were already interested in replacing meat in their diets. Finally, it’s important to note that less than a third of customers rebought PBM in the three months after first trying it. Because I have trimmed the sample to only include households that make regular trips , each customer had plenty of opportunities to buy PBM again, and this shows that PBM has not yet converted many of the people who try it to become regular purchasers. There are also some clear patterns in how earlier first time buyers compared to later ones. Early buyers were younger and less wealthy . Earlier buyers were more likely to be ’low meat’, bought less meat and ground beef, and bought more meat replacements. This suggest that later purchasers were less predisposed to buying tofu or veggie burgers, so were better candidates to be replacing thier meat intake, but comparing late buyers to those who never bought PBM is more mixed.
Later buyers are slightly less likely to have bought low amounts of meat than non PBM customers, but on average, they still spent less total on meat and ground beef and spent more on tofu and veggie burgers. This means that the most meat heavy consumers are still holding out on trying PBM.In order to test whether there was any evidence of plant-based meat competing with meat, I identified a random source of price variation in the data: region level price promotions . In private conversations with the grocery chain, they explained that promotions are almost exclusively decided on by each of 11 regional pricing executives, with very little input from the corporate office. For small, less important UPCs, such as the PBM UPCs, these individual pricing executives are unlikely to consult any pricing models or other data, but instead often simply put certain items on sale by intuition, or for the reason that those items had not been on promotion in a long time. In order to test this lack of coordination, I calculated the correlation of PBM products by region with other PBM products and all other meat products across all regions. While some larger UPCs had reasonable correlations across regions, nearly all PBM UPC correlations with themselves AND with other UPCs were unremarkable. In addition, I ran regressions of lagged quantity of PBM on price across each region individually, to see if some regions were putting PBM on promotion when either demand had been high or low in the weeks earlier, and found no significant results in any region. As a result, I felt confident in the assessment of my corporate contact at this chain that promotional prices for PBM are as good as random. This is especially true when looking at each specific store: decisions to promote are not related to store specific facts, as they are set at a higher regional level. Promotional prices are identified in the data by two variables: net price and gross price. Gross price is the price listed on the price tag in the store as the price when the item is not on promotion . If the item is on promotion, the gross price is the price listed as “was”, while net price is the price actually paid. In theory, all these prices are identical within each region each week, but sometimes there is unexplained variation in the prices that customers actually pay. This may be explained by manufacturer’s coupons, blueberry plant pot but other times it is unexplained. In order to get a region level weekly promotion, I subtract the gross price from the net price across all purchases within a region in each week.According with the International Diabetes Federation , the prevalence of people with T2DM raised from 108 million to 537 million in the last 40 years. T2DM is a disease caused by the incapacity of the cells to respond to insulin effects. This disease is strongly linked with obesity resulting from the excess of body weight and sedentarism . Obesity is considered a complex chronic progressive disease defined as abnormal or excessive adipose tissue accumulation caused by an imbalance of energy intake and energy expenditure that leads to mild, chronic, systemic inflammation. In a cross-sectional study from 2015 in Canadian adults, it was reported that ultra-processed food consumption, which contributed to 24-73% of total daily energy intake, was associated with higher prevalence of obesity in the studied population . It was also reported that high fat diets and elevated intake of red meat as well as high sugar intake impairs health causing obesity and increase the risk of noncommunicable diseases such as type 2 diabetes mellitus , dementia, myocardial infarction, stroke, hypertension, fatty liver disease and cancer . In general, obesity is associated with a lower life quality and expectancy by an estimated of 5-20 years depending on the severity and NCD’s . Adipose tissue has a crucial role on systemic energy balance , playing an essential role in maintaining lipid and glucose homeostasis.
The fat stored as triglycerides tends to accumulate in the subcutaneous and visceral depots, incrementing their size and producing hypertrophy, hyperplasia, and systemic metabolic dysfunction . The main mechanism believed to link obesity with T2DM is insulin resistance derived from adipose tissue accompanied by impaired insulin secretion by β-cells in the pancreas. Free fatty acids stimulate NF-κB and P38 MAPK signaling pathway through MyD88 and TRIF mediated downstream pathways with a subsequent activation of TLR4 expression in adipocytes and macrophages, increasing ER stress and producing ROS, promoting the secretion of proinflammatory cytokines, causing the initial step of low-grade systemic inflammation . The pro-inflammatory adipokines secreted by adipose tissue are monocyte chemotactic protein- 1 , tumor necrosis factor α , interleukin 1-β , and interleukin-6 . The potential cellular mechanisms of obesity-induced insulin resistance start with increased systemic TNF-α which stimulates the activity of IKK, p38 MAPK, JNK, and PKC, insulin receptor substrate ; impairing tyrosine phosphorylation and increasing the risk of insulin resistance in adipose tissues, muscles, and liver . Lifestyle modifications with controlled calorie intake, healthy diet and increased physical activity are considered the fundamental basis of a successful treatment . Higher protein intake, foods with a low glycemic index and lower fat consumption may help diabetic patients . Moreover, recent studies suggest that the intake of fresh fruits and vegetables is related with a lower incidence of T2DM. In a randomized controlled trial, it has been explained and demonstrated how diets rich in fruits and vegetables can improve blood glucose and insulin secretion . Furthermore, studies also indicate that bio-active compounds present in fruits, vegetables, spices, legumes, edible flowers, mushrooms, and medicinal plants, are prospective candidates for the prevention and the control of T2DM . Fruits and vegetables are rich sources of bio-active compounds, particularly polyphenols, exerting numerous positive human health effects. Polyphenols are plant secondary metabolites that act as a defense against pathogens, diseases, predators, ultraviolet radiation, parasites, and oxidants . Polyphenols are widely used in the food industry as a natural antioxidant ingredient in foods by their effects on preventing lipid oxidation and oxidative rancidity . Polyphenols are classified as flavonoids and non-flavonoids; flavonoids are divided in 12 groups including, flavonols, flavanols, flavons, flavan-3-ols, anthocyanins, flavanones, isoflavones, and dihydrochalcone. Non-flavonoids include phenolic acids, lignans and stilbenes. Following intake of polyphenols, they undergo important metabolism , which start in the enterocytes of small and large intestines before being absorbed into the circulation. Once in the hepatocytes, the hydroxyl group in the flavonoids undertake glucuronidation, methylation and sulfation to be available to enter in blood circulation. The next step is their flux to all organs and finally their elimination through urine. In the large intestine, the colonic microbiota will produce an extensive breakdown of the original polyphenolic structure into a phenolic metabolites with low-molecular-weight, this will produce a better absorbability of the compounds, and its passage to the secondary phase metabolism .Anthocyanins are hydrophilic pigments contained in red, violet, and blue colors of fruits and vegetables. Most abundant anthocyanins are glycosylated forms of cyanidin, delphinidin, malvidin, peonidin, petunidin, and pelargonidin. Anthocyanins are commonly linked to a sugar molecule, frequently glucose, nevertheless, rhamnose, galactose, and rutinose can also be present. Anthocyanins play an important role in obesity and diabetes prevention. Different studies have suggested that, once absorbed, anthocyanins can positively modulate GLUT4 in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue; other authors conclude that these phytochemicals may affect gastrointestinal microbiota and impact the host health . One of the foods rich in anthocyanins are BB.