The COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated considerable interest in the resilience of the U.S. food system. Less attention has been paid to the resiliency characteristics of the final link in the food system – individual households. We use national survey data from July 2020 to understand the food acquisition, preparation, and management strategies that households implemented in response to the pandemic. We find a substantial increase in the amount of food prepared and consumed at home which scales with respondents’ time availability, perceived risks of dining out, and pandemic-induced income disruption. We then identify several household responses to support this increase in home food consumption that are in line with practices suggested to enhance resiliency at other links in the food supply chain, including increased cold storage capacity and enhanced in-house capability via improved cooking and food management skills. We discuss how responses such as improved food skills can reduce the propagation of shocks through the supply chain by allowing greater flexibility and less waste, while actions such as increased home cold storage capacity could undermine system resilience by exacerbating bullwhip effects, i.e., amplifying consumer demand shocks that are propagated to upstream food supply chain actors.

COVID-19 大流行激发了人们对美国食品系统弹性的极大兴趣。很少有人关注食品系统最后一环——个体家庭的弹性特征。我们使用 2020 年 7 月的全国调查数据来了解家庭为应对大流行病而实施的食物获取、准备和管理策略。我们发现在家准备和消费的食物数量大幅增加，这与受访者的可用时间、外出就餐的感知风险以及大流行引起的收入中断有关。然后，我们确定了几种家庭应对措施，以支持家庭食品消费的增加，这些措施符合建议的做法，以增强食品供应链中其他环节的弹性，包括通过改进烹饪和食品管理技能来增加冷藏容量和增强内部能力。我们讨论了提高食品技能等应对措施如何通过允许更大的灵活性和更少的浪费来减少冲击在供应链中的传播，而增加家庭冷藏容量等行动可能会通过加剧牛鞭效应（即扩大消费者需求）来破坏系统的弹性传播到上游食品供应链参与者的冲击。