The presence of food consumer behaviors among SNAP and non-SNAP participants are investigated to determine if there is a correlation between checking food labels and dietary quality, which will be assessed using macronutrients. Previous literature has found that SNAP participants have worse dietary quality when compared to non-participants (Andreyeva et al., 2018; French et al., 2019; Leung et al., 2022; Mande & Flaherty, 2023). However, these studies use HEI, also known as Healthy Eating Index, scores to assess dietary quality rather than macronutrients. 2017-2018 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) was used to investigate the association between proactive food consumer behavior and diet quality of SNAP participants and non-participants. It appears that use of certain food label information could be positively associated with diet quality for SNAP participants, but this positive correlation appears to be stronger and clearer among non-participants, which could indicate that there may be things to be done, to minimize and investigate these differences, by policymakers.
