Do women consume less beef and pork than men? Do black Americans consume less dairy than white Americans? Answers to these types of questions are essential to developing targeted campaigns that employ some of the elementary principles of consumer marketing such as market selection and market segmentation. Dietary habits of an individual are complex products of that individual’s social and cultural context, influenced by a variety of factors including race, gender, ethnicity, age, income, social status and level of education. To successfully persuade large numbers of people to change their dietary habits with well-tailored campaigns, animal activists have to understand how food consumption patterns vary with these and other demographic characteristics.

Sources cited USDA, Economic Research Service. Commodity Consumption by Population Characteristics . (link, accessed January 1, 2013) USDA and USDHHS. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010, 7th edition . December 2010. (link, accessed January 1, 2013)

Thankfully for us, for over five decades, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have collected data on individual food intake along with demographic data in extensive surveys. Since 2002, they have jointly administered an integrated program, known as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which is uniquely comprehensive in that it includes both a physical examination of survey participants and a detailed interview involving a recall of everything consumed during the previous 24 hours. NHANES uses a representative sample of the US population and is widely used by scientists and medical researchers.

It is non-trivial, however, to convert the data from these surveys into an estimate of the amount of each commodity that enters the market for consumption per person. For example, a survey participant may report eating about two cups of cooked egg noodles but to disaggregate this data to estimate the amount of eggs that enter the market for it is not easy. Two divisions of the USDA (the Economic Research Service and the Agricultural Research Service) have collaborated together and completed exactly this task. They used data from the NHANES 2001-02 and other surveys, and first published their results in August 2011 and then updated them just last month (July 2012). The raw data used for this post may be found here.

By gender

Let’s begin with gender. The following shows food availability (which serves as a proxy for food consumption) in number of pounds in retail weight equivalent of each food category consumed per person per year separated by gender. Retail weight is the weight of a product as sold in the retail market. For example, the retail weight of a banana will likely include the weight of the peel. In case of meat, depending on how it is sold at the retail level, its retail weight may or may not include the weight of bone, fat, or inedible trimmings.

Meat consumption by gender in the United States

(in retail weight pounds per person per year)

The data show that women eat substantially less meat than men, especially beef and pork. Compared to men, however, a larger proportion of the meat consumed by women is chicken or fish. A question that arises, of course, is if women over time have been replacing beef and pork in their diet with chicken and fish. This is of concern to animal activists who care about individual animals and not just the weight of meat consumed. They value the interests of a five-pound chicken as much as that of a thousand-pound steer and so, a shift from beef/pork to chicken/fish causes harm to more animals (e.g., see Vegan Outreach make this argument here). Unfortunately, this data is not enough to definitively answer the question—for that we will need more of a longitudinal study with repeated surveys over an extended period of time.

But there are some related questions that the data can answer. To gain a complete picture of the relative consumption patterns of men and women, take a look at the figure below which illustrates consumption data for each major food category.

Food consumption by gender in the United States

(in retail weight pounds per person per year)

If we look at the per capita consumption of all major categories, we find that women, on average, eat about 20% less than what men eat (in retail weight). This is crudely consistent with the difference in healthy body weights of men and women and also with the dietary guidelines released by the USDA and the HSS which suggest that caloric needs of women are about 20% less than those of men. But women eat 42% less beef/pork, 23% less poultry and 21% less fish than what men eat (all a larger reduction than the average of 20%). This is compensated by the fact that women eat only 10% less fruits and only 18% less vegetables than what men eat. In fact, if we dig even deeper into the data, we find that women eat more of the healthiest vegetables than men. Women eat 19% more cruciferous vegetables, 12% more broccoli and 14% more leafy greens than men (not illustrated in the bar graphs in this post). So, on average, in relation to men, women are compensating for their proportionally lower intake of beef/pork with a proportionally higher intake of fruits and vegetables, especially the most healthful vegetables! But, it is perfectly possible that both men and women are replacing beef/pork with chicken/fish and this data cannot conclude one way or the other.

That women eat only 65% of the meat that men eat leads to some additional inferences. For example, on average and assuming no other influencing factors, persuading a man to give up meat only on weekdays has about same impact on animals as persuading a woman to commit to becoming vegetarian. This, however, does not imply that vegetarian outreach is more effective when targeted at men rather than women (or vice-versa) because such effectiveness can depend on other influencing factors such as differences between men and women on persuadability and openness to a change in diet.

By race or ethnicity

The following bar graph illustrates the different categories of meat consumed by United States residents, separated by race or ethnicity. As in earlier graphs, the numbers shown are in pounds of retail weight consumed per person per year.

Meat consumption by race or ethnicity in the United States

(in retail weight pounds per person per year)

The data show that Hispanic Americans consume more beef than other racial or ethnic groups. Black Americans consume a significantly larger amount of chicken (at least 38% more), turkey (at least 38% more) and fish (at least 53% more) than any other racial or ethnic group included in this data. Given that consumption of chicken and fish causes harm to a significantly larger number of animals than the same amount of consumption of beef or pork, this data should inspire animal activists of a utilitarian persuasion to intensify their efforts to reach black Americans with their message.

By the way, for the sake of completeness, here is the per capita consumption data on all food categories separated by race or ethnicity.

Food consumption by race or ethnicity in the United States

(in retail weight pounds per person per year)

On a final note, demographic characteristics such as race or gender can be extremely useful in building effective outreach strategies but can also trick our minds into engaging in unwelcome stereotyping. Individual behavior within any demographic group varies greatly; we stereotype when we judge an individual solely by his or her demographic group. In using this data, let’s heed the advice frequently given in consumer marketing courses: segment, but do not stereotype.

Note: This post was updated on August 24, 2012.