Food-Related Lifestyle And Health Attitudes Of Dutch Vegetarians
Researchers compared the demographic traits and attitudes toward food and health of vegetarians, non-vegetarians who use meat substitutes, and non-vegetarians who do not use meat substitutes. This study found the vegetarian group to be more motivated by health than the other groups. In addition, non-vegetarians who ate meat substitues were found to be less motivated by health and less demographically homogenous than vegetarians.
Article Abstract:
“The aim was to investigate socio-demographic characteristics, and attitudes to food and health of vegetarians, non-vegetarian consumers of meat substitutes, and meat consumers in The Netherlands. The sample used for this study (participants > or =18 years) was taken from the Dutch National Food Consumption Survey, 1997/1998. Vegetarians (n = 63) and consumers of meat substitutes (n = 39) had similar socio-demographic profiles: higher education levels, higher social economic status, smaller households, and more urbanised residential areas, compared to meat consumers (n = 4313). Attitudes to food were assessed by the food-related lifestyle instrument. We found that vegetarians (n = 32) had more positive attitudes towards importance of product information, speciality shops, health, novelty, ecological products, social event, and social relationships than meat consumers (n = 1638).”
“The health consciousness scale, which was used to assess attitudes to health, supported earlier findings that vegetarians are more occupied by health. Food-related lifestyle and health attitudes of meat substitute consumers (n = 17) were predominantly in-between those from vegetarians and meat consumers. The outcome of this study suggests that in strategies to promote meat substitutes for non-vegetarian consumers, the focus should not only be on health and ecological aspects of foods.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15183917