Agricultural News
FooDS Survey Asks the Hard Questions - Does Chocolate Milk Come from Brown Cows and More
Thu, 17 Aug 2017 15:56:17 CDT
Oklahoma State University's Agricultural Economics Department released the summary report of the August 2017 edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) this week. According to it, willingness-to-pay (WTP) increased for chicken breasts, pork chops, and chicken wings. However, WTP decreased for steak, hamburger, and deli ham. WTP for pork chops experienced the largest percent increase compared to one month ago. WTP for all meat products is lower than one year ago.
Expenditures on food eaten at home increased 1.25% over the last month while expenditures on food purchased away from home increased 0.28%. Based on the report, consumers say they expect the price of beef to remain relatively unchanged. Chicken and pork prices on the other hand are expected to slightly increase compared to one month ago. Consumers say they plan to buy less beef and chicken and more pork compared to last month. Respondents plan to eat out increased slightly compared to last month.
Taste, safety, and price remained consumers' most important values when purchasing food this month. These values are comparable to the top values held by consumers over the last several months.
Several new ad hoc questions were added to this month's survey, in order to replicate a survey conducted by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy, that revealed 7% of Americans believe chocolate milk to come from 'brown cows.'
Roughly 90% of the respondents surveyed, chose the best answer, that the chocolate comes from cocoa seeds and is mixed (along with sugar) with white milk. Only 1.6% of respondents selected 'brown cows' as the source of chocolate milk. Those that conducted the survey offered the following note.
"We wondered if many of the individuals who said chocolate milk comes from brown cows were actually goofing around--selecting that response just because it sounded funny. One way to check this is to ask at the end of the survey if they were 'goofing around' on at least one question. Only two respondents said they did, but those two got the question about chocolate milk correct."
To mitigate some of these responders' honesty and the level of seriousness at which they took the survey, the FooDS administrators asked several more questions with commonly known answers.
"Finally, whenever we see people saying chocolate milk comes from brown cows, the sun revolves around the earth, and that water is a solid, we wonder how seriously they are taking the survey. You never really know, but you can ask them. At the very end of the survey we asked them how seriously they took the survey, giving them several options to choose from," the report summarizes.
"Close to 99% indicated they did indeed take the survey seriously, whereas 11 out of the 1026 respondents indicated they rushed through the survey at times, and 2 indicated they were 'goofing around' on at least one question. If they are telling the truth, we can say that the 1.4% of people who said water was a solid was either not paying attention or joking. Of course, this doesn't explain the 18% of people who believe the sun rotates around the earth."
To take a look at the complete summary report of this edition of the FooDS Survey, click or tap here.
Source - Oklahoma State University
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