title: Food-related lifestyle and health attitudes of Dutch vegetarians, non-vegetarian consumers of meat substitutes, and meat consumers.
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.
authors.affiliation: Division of Human Nutrition, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 8129, Bode 62, 6700 EV Wageningen, The Netherlands. annet.hoek@wur.nl
authors.forename: Annet C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Hoek
authors.forename: Pieternel A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Luning
authors.forename: Annette
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stafleu
authors.forename: Cees
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: de Graaf
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001294:Attitude to Health; D004032:Diet / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D004034:Diet Surveys; D014676:Diet, Vegetarian / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D005526:Food, Formulated / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008297:Male; D008460:Meat / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009426:Netherlands; D017678:Sex Distribution; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors