Health and cost implications of choosing an organic diet - empirical insights from Danish household panel data

Summary

Health and cost considerations have repeatedly been found to constitute the main arguments for respectively buying and not buying organic food. The present paper contributes to this line of research by studying not only the dietary but also the budgetary consequences of choosing the organic varieties. Using purchase data for a large sample of Danish households, we found that households with higher organic consumption have healthier diets as measured in terms of more vegetables and fruits but less fat/confectionary and meat. Furthermore, for the vast majority of households it was found that buying organic foods did not increase food expenditures - possibly due to differences in diet composition. The key to these findings lies in the adoption of a holistic approach that is able to capture costs and health effects of differences in consumption patterns instead of pursuing a product-by-product comparison. Tobit and GLS regressions have been used.