Different aspects of organic and conventional food consumers lifestyle

*Ewa Rembiałkowska¹, Renata Kazimierczak², Dominika Średnicka², Katarzyna Bieńko², Magdalena Bielska²

Summary
Organic food is becoming more and more popular nowadays. At the same time there are still very few studies which enable us to assess objectively the real influence of organic food on human health.
Aim
The aim of this research was to analyze and to compare some aspects of organic and conventional consumers´ lifestyle and to compare the self-assessed health state of organic and conventional consumers.
Material and methods
The research was conducted by a survey method. The questionnaire survey covered 200 women at the average age of 42.3 years: 100 organic consumers and 100 conventional consumers. Respondents were asked to complete an anonymous survey composed of 4 parts concerning health state, nutrition, living environment quality and contact with nature. All the answers were quantified and the received indicators were analyzed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), with significance defined as a p-value = 0.05, using STATGRAPHICS(r)Plus 5.1.
Results
The results of the analyses show that organic consumers assess their health state significantly better in comparison with conventional consumers. The nutritional pattern of organic consumers is also much closer to the nutritionists´ recommendations. Moreover, analysis of living environment quality also shows a significant difference in favour of organic consumers. However, the presented analyses did not show any significant differences between organic and conventional consumers in terms of contact with nature.
Conclusions
Promotion of an ecological lifestyle including organic food consumption can positively influence nutritional pattern and the self-assessed health state of consumers.

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