Use of health foods by the elderly

Abstract

Many nutritionists believe that the elderly are especially prone to food faddism because they seem to possess many characteristics that make them susceptible to the lures of health food advocates. However, to date there has been no systematic survey to determine what percent of the elderly use or buy health foods. We interviewed a total of 354 senior citizens from 15 randomly chosen senior citizen centers in New York City. Health food users were classified in two ways: those who have ever shopped in health food stores, and those who shopped in health food stores regularly (at least once a month) and spent a minimum of $4.00 per trip. The results show that 38.7% had ever shopped in health food stores but only 10.7% had done so regularly. The median amount ($4.00) spent on health foods was less than half of the amount of an average sale reported by the health food industry and represented 7.7% of the food dollar. Both chi-square tests and discriminant analysis revealed that education, distance to a health food store, and average income were significantly correlated with health food use.