Very little is known about how changes in the retail environment affect consumers’diet and health status, especially in developing countries. This article examines the impact of supermarket purchases on the dietary practices of households in Guatemala, using an instrumental variable method to take account of the potential endogeneity of the supermarket purchase variable. The results reveal that supermarket purchases increase the share of highly and partially processed foods at the expense of staple foods, and are also positively and significantly associated with individual Body Mass Index. Different policy moves should be envisaged towards‘healthier’diets.

Overweight/obesity, caused by the 'nutrition transition', is identified as one of the leading risk factors for non-communicable mortality. The nutrition transition in developing countries is associated with a major shift from the consumption of staple crops and whole grains to highly and partially processed foods. This study examines the contribution of processed foods consumption to the prevalence of overweight/obesity in Guatemala using generalized methods of moments (GMM) regression. The results show that all other things remaining constant, a 10% point increase in the share of partially processed foods from the total household food expenditure increases the BMI of family members (aged 10 years and above) by 3.95%. The impact of highly processed foods is much stronger. A 10% point increase in the share of highly processed food items increases the BMI of individuals by 4.25%, ceteris paribus. The results are robust when body weight is measured by overweight/obesity indicators. These findings suggest that increasing shares of partially and highly processed foods from the total consumption expenditure could be one of the major risk factors for the high prevalence of overweight/obesity in the country.

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Studies on input adoption consider education as one of the most important factors that affect adoption decisions. However, very little is known about the spill‐over effect of intra‐household education on the adoption process and about the impact of education on adoption decisions under different socioeconomic conditions. We investigate these two issues using a discrete choice model. The results indicate that the decision making process is a decentralised one in which educated adult members of the household actively participate in the decision making process. This casts doubt on the traditional assumption that the household head is the sole decision maker. The results reveal that there is a substantial and statistically significant intra‐household spill‐over effect of education on the adoption decision of households. The results of the study also show that the coefficient of the education and the environment interaction variable is negative and statistically significant. This demonstrates that education and socioeconomic environments could be substitutes in modern environments and complementary in traditional ones. This implies that the expansion of education in traditional areas may be more attractive than in modern areas since education is usually the only means to enhance the ability of farmers to acquire, synthesise and respond to innovations such as chemical fertiliser.