Dietary Changes and Household Consumption Pattern in Iran: Integration of Input - Output Tables and Household Demand System

 In this study, the changes in food items of current dietary after shifting toward the dietaries based on the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) recommendations and the Mediterranean dietary were determined. Then, with integrating household demand system in a Leontief price mode based on the Mongelli et al. (2010) method, substitution and income effects of changes in dietary and consumption patterns were analyzed.  Results show that more than 10 percent increment consumptions of some foods such as oil seeds, fish and seafood products, red meat and meat products and dairy products and also value-added increase of primary inputs of these food items is possible as dietary changes.​​ Base and purchasing prices of most of commodities and services as result increase in value added of primary inputs of mentioned food items, have increased. The average percentage increase in price index of expenditure categories has fluctuated between 0.01 and 1.96 percent. Integration of household demand system and Leontief price model results showed that expenditure share of food, beverages and tobacco and transport and communication tend to increase and the share of other groups decrease. Proportional to the stated changes, expenditure amounts for food, beverages and tobacco and transport and communication increase while it decreases for other groups. Since more than 30 percent of households’ expenditure is devoted to food, beverages and tobacco group increase in the share of this group and decreasing the share of other groups may result more reduction of recreational, cultural and health items budjet, and this could be an undesirable change in consumption pattern. But since the effect of budget on consumer behavior is higher than price effects and often complementary relationships exist among expenditure groups, it can be concluded that this negative effect will be compensated if changes in consumption pattern be accompanied with increasing household budget. In the current condition, in order to exploit the benefits of nutritional transition, it is suggested to organize nutrition institutes and introduce appropriate dietary directly and also to use indirect means such as taxes and insurance for improving healthy and sustainable dietary indirectly.   JEL Classification: C67,C51, D12