Purpose of My Purchases
The purpose of the My Purchases research project is to examine the impact of our shopping habits on our health. We do this by analysing purchasing patterns and health information over time.
In the long term, the My Purchases project will lead to new knowledge about the importance of our shopping habits and how diseases arise, progress and can be prevented. This knowledge can lead to better opportunities for tailoring advice to the individual citizen, including people who suffer from chronic illnesses.
In My Purchases, researchers will examine connections between our health and the things we eat, drink, use as moisturizes, inhale and otherwise are exposed to throughout our lives. Such correlations or patterns can be investigated by combining information about shopping habits with information on health and disease from the Danish registries or other research projects. We can also use information from registries on e.g. education and place of residence to compare socio-economic and geographical conditions with shopping habits.
Researchers can, for example, investigate the connection between our purchases and the risk of contracting diseases such as salmonella or of worsening chronic diseases such as inflammatory bowel diseases, sclerosis or diabetes.
In short, whether an individual is basically healthy or suffers from a chronic disease we want to examine the long-term perspectives of what to buy and what to avoid buying in order to stay healthy.
A description of the research projects that use data from My Purchases is available here.