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Americans who eat organic?
Hello! Thanks for your question about the percentage of Americans who eat organic. The short version is that 40% of Americans eat "some" or "mostly" organic food, and the consumers of organic food are more likely to be college-educated. Below you will find a deep dive of my findings.
METHODOLOGY
I searched industry reports, trusted media sites and academic journals for statistics regarding the proportion of the US population consume organic food, and their level of education. I limited my search to sources from 2015 onward.
FINDINGS
PERCENTAGE OF AMERICANS WHO EAT ORGANIC
In 2016, the Pew Research Center published a report called “The New Food Fight: US Public Divides Over Food Science” which was based on results of a survey “conducted from May 10 to June 6, 2016, with a nationally representative survey of 1,480 adults”. If you’re interested in what proportion of the US population eat "mostly" organic food, then the answer is only 6%. If you expand your definition to include people who say that “some” of the food they eat is organic this increases by 34%, so 40% of Americans say that “some or most of the food they eat is organic”. Should you include anyone who said they bought something organic in the past month “whether produce, meat, fish, grains or packaged foods” then this includes 68% of Americans.
Despite these relatively high reported figures, note that in 2016 organic food still only made up 5% of the total food sales in the US, according to the "Organic Trade Association, the nation’s leading organic industry group".
LEVEL OF EDUCATION OF ORGANIC CONSUMERS
An article published in 2016 by Sustainable Food News states that one of the characteristics of the “core organic shopper” is being “college educated”, however it provides no further detail or data for this statement. The academic research that I found from the past 2 years, "Modeling and Testing Consumer Engagement in the US Organic Food Market" by John L Anderson of Bowdoin College, and “Characteristics of U.S. Organic Fresh Produce Consumers: A Double Hurdle Model Approach” by Bo Chen at the University of Kentucky, both tested hypotheses that included whether being college-educated was a predictor of organic consumption as previous research had shown. Anderson returned results that proved their hypotheses that “households are more likely to buy organic fruit if they have a higher income, have a young child, are college-educated, are married, and live in an urban area”. Chen concluded that if the head of the household had a higher level of education, then it was more likely that the household bought organic produce, consistent with previous research by “Smith, et al. (2009), Dettmann and Dimitri (2009) and Zhang, et al. (2008)”.
Apart from university student reports regarding the demographic profile of consumers, I was unable to find hard data to indicate whether college educated consumers were more likely to eat organic food. I expanded my search to include research published by the Hartman Group in 2015, from their Natural and Organic survey conducted in 2014. The survey found that there were some differences between the average organic consumer when compared to someone who did not eat organic, including more likely to be college educated. Across all the consumers surveyed, 47% of the total population had a college degree or higher; this increased to 50% for organic consumers and decreased to 38% for non-organic consumers. The Hartman Group has repeated the Natural and Organic survey in the subsequent years but the summary released does not include this breakdown of consumer demographic therefore the 2014 data is the most up-to-date, reliable information available online without accessing information behind a paywall.
It is worth considering that the demographics of the organic food consumer may well be rapidly changing as the organic market becomes more accessible and affordable, led by retailers such as the 365 chain from Whole Foods, which “has been opening its core concept stores in smaller markets with a lower density of college-educated consumers and lower household income”.
To wrap it up, 40% of Americans eat organic food at least some of the time and organic food consumers are more likely to be college-educated than those who don’t eat organic. Thanks for using Wonder! Please let us know if we can help with anything else!