Vegetarians and Money: Results From a National Survey

On Saturday mornings in the summer, I head for the North Asheville Farmers' Market. The diversity and quality of produce at the market is impressive, but good veggies don't come cheap. Tomatoes are running $4 a pound this year as compared to $1.48 a pound for chicken breasts at my local supermarket and $2.28 a pound for pork loin. But last week, despite the cost, I did load up on the tomatoes. That evening while my wife and I were enjoying a terrific tomato nicoise salad, I asked Mary Jean whether she thought vegetarians tended to be better or worse off financially than the average American. "Are you kidding?" she said. "Most of the vegetarians I know seem pretty well off. I think they make more money than the typical American." I told her she was wrong, that I had just read on the website Faunalytics about a national survey of American food habits. It found that vegetarianism and veganism were more common among lower income groups than among people making more money. She said she didn't believe it. Faunalytics (formerly called the Humane Research Council) is one of my go-to sources for information on animal issues. The blog post I read described a recent survey by the Vegetarian Resource Group. Over the last 20 years, the VRG has regularly commissioned large scale surveys of American diets. The 2015 VRG survey was conducted by the widely respected Harris Poll and was based on the responses of 2,017 American adults. (Details of the 2015 poll and the results are here.) Curr...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news