Undernutrition contributes to more than half of all deaths of children aged under five globally and is directly linked with economic development. But, despite comparatively higher economic development, a child in India is more likely to be undernourished than one in sub-Saharan Africa, a paradoxically high rate of child undernutrition. This study sets out to determine how providing information about the value of nutrition to low-income communities can affect their food-shopping preferences in terms of choosing food that has a higher nutrition content.

In this randomised field experiment in India, messages recorded by an Indian public figure are sent via WhatsApp to 30,000 low-income individuals. One arm of the study receives videos about the health benefits of a nutritious diet; the second receives similar videos focusing on the economic benefits, and the third receives placebo videos. Comparing the changes in the real-life shopping baskets of the three arms shows how reducing information poverty could enable cost-effective interventions to build nourishment in emerging markets.

Food-subsidy programmes – universally adopted policies to reduce malnutrition – are costly. In contrast, with the advent of mobile phone adoption in low-income markets, information-based interventions have become considerably scalable and cheaper to provide. Much has been done on testing the effects of providing health information about value of a nutritious diet. However, little is known about how highlighting the economic benefits of a healthy diet affects peoples’ food choices.

Non-financial pathways to encourage individuals towards more nutritious food choices are easily scalable; the knowledge gained may also show how to increase the effectiveness of government and private sector programmes aimed at building better-nourished communities in emerging markets to combat the continuing severe global burden of undernutrition.