Food Supply Chain Analytics and Sensing Initiative

Access to Healthy Food

Professors Retsef Levi and Georgia Perakis have studied food access and the management of food waste in the United States from an operations management perspective. Their goal is to effectively increase fruit and vegetable consumption among low income households to ultimately improve health outcomes.

Their research focuses have included 1) household grocery shopping decision-making and the impact of interventions targeted to the household and neighborhood levels; 2) increasing the throughput and reducing the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables in the perishable supply chain by modeling information sharing scenarios ; and 3)  reducing food loss and food waste at the farm and retail levels.

Principal Investigators

Retsef Levi

Retsef Levi

Management Science

J. Spencer Standish (1945) Professor of Management

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Georgia Perakis

Georgia Perakis

Management Science

John C Head III Dean (Interim), MIT Sloan School of Management

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Optimal Interventions for Increasing Healthy Food Consumption Among Low-Income Populations

Paper presentation at the 4th Workshop on Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG’20), August 18, 2020: Title: Optimal Interventions for Increasing Healthy Food Consumption Among Low-Income Populations Authors: Elisabeth Paulson, Retsef Levi and Georgia Perakis Speaker: Elisabeth Paulson Session: Environment, Agriculture and Food Consumption

"Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Consumption: The Impact of Access and Value."

Retsef Levi, Georgia Perakis, and Elisabeth Paulson. In Proceedings of the 2018 MSOM Conference, Dallas, TX: July 2018.

"Optimal Interventions for Increasing Healthy Food Consumption Among Low Income Households."

Levi, Retsef, Elisabeth Paulson, and Georgia Perakis, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6053-19. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, October 2020.

"Reverse Information Sharing: Reducing Costs in Supply Chains with Yield Uncertainty."

Harsha, Pavithra, Ashish Jagmohan, Retsef Levi, Elisabeth Paulson, and Georgia Perakis. (Resubmitted to Management Science), MIT Sloan Working Paper 6172-20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, December 2020.