and Democratic advertisements excluded individuals shopping at Bass Pro while Republican advertisements excluded Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s shoppers. Democrats targeted individuals getting groceries from HelloFresh and Blue Apron while Republicans targeted those who ate at Cracker Barrel and Chick-Fil-A. In the 1992 presidential election, the Democratic nominee won 60% of the counties that had Whole Food stores and only 40% of the counties that had Cracker Barrel restaurants [4]. In 2012, this gap increased to 77% of the counties with Whole Food and 29% of the counties with Cracker Barrel for the Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. 

Kannan and Veazie [5] reported that political affiliation was associated without multiple health outcomes, including mortality. They found that liberals/democrats were more likely to smoke and drink, whereas conservatives/republicans were more likely to be sedentary (not exercise) and to consume a smaller variety of fruits and vegetables [5]. A more recent study showed that democrats were more likely to take part in a vegan or vegetarian-based diet than republicans [1]. Similarly, food also plays a role in marketing to consumers political leanings, thus affecting their perceptions concerning food.  Boeuf [2] reported that when a certain food advertisement refers to patriotism and traditional values, health claims are less effective and result in higher perceptions of health risks for liberals. Similarly, references to social justice and sense of community in food advertisements increase the perception of health risks for conservatives [2].

Hodson and Earle [6] found that individuals who identify as conservatives consume more meat compared to individuals who identify as liberals. The current and former vegans that are higher in conservative ideology show greater odds of being a former rather than current vegan. People also had differing reasons to begin or quit veganism. Conservatives tended to become a vegan for reasons less centered in animal justice. Meat cravings or lifestyle inconvenience had little effect on an individuals’ choice to consume meat. These same researchers found that ideology and justice concerns are relevant in maintaining vegan status [6]. Around 1/10 of liberals identify as vegetarians and 5% of these individuals say they are vegans [7]. There was an increase in market availability and sales of plant-based products, however, no increase in people converting to vegetarianism or veganism. It appears that Americans are willing to experiment with some of these plant products however, most people are unwilling to completely make the jump to vegetarianism.

Matek Sarić, et al. [8] reported that there were no differences in environmental and political determinants of food choices based on the place of residence, age, gender, and employment status among Croatians. This conflicts with finding in the U.S which show a relationship between environmental and political determinants and food choices [9]. This suggests that government policies have more of an effect on Americans’ diet than the diet of Croatians.

Karami, et al. [10] compared the social media usage of democrats and republicans and how it represents their eating habits, and found that republicans consumed less fruits and vegetables as compared to democrats. Following along the same lines, democrats consumed foods that were minimally processed and contained less fat when compared to republicans. Additionally, democrats had a higher participation rate in special diets such as veganism and vegetarianism than republicans. To gain a clearer understanding of food-related political consumerism among college students, a survey was conducted of undergraduate students attending a Land Grant University in the South.

Methods

A 17-question online survey was randomly administered to 537 college student volunteers specifically responding to a rating scale shown below to each statement.

Figure 1: 17 question survey offered to 537 college student volunteers

The survey was administered using Qualtrics™ online software. An email with the description of the study and a link to the online survey on Qualtrics™ was sent to a random sample of approximately 22,000 eligible undergraduates and graduate students, age 18 and older. This email emphasized that students’ participation in the study was voluntary and confidential, and those who would wish to participate could access the link in the email to complete the survey. The survey was approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB2021-295) before being disseminated. Participants had access to the survey for two months to facilitate a larger survey response. Responses to the survey were automatically recorded via Qualtrics™ survey software. Data were then exported via an Excel file and imported to SAS® OnDemand for Academics for analysis.

 The surveys were completed between January 2022 and January 2023. A total of 537 responses were collected with a voluntary response rate of 2.4% of the total Undergraduate university population (22,467). The survey had a completion rate of 95%, and the median time to complete the survey was five minutes. Responses were collected and analyzed using descriptive methods to generate means using PCSAS. Spearman’s correlation coefficient was determined pairing questions about political issues and eating habits where the same answer scale was used.

Results

Of the 537 respondents, 58.4% (312) were females, 37.8% (202) were male, 3.6% (19) identified as non-binary, and 0.19% (1) preferred not to respond as to their gender. The respondents came from a general college student population that was 52.5% (11,800) female and 47.5% (10,667) male. The breakdown of respondents by class were 21.1, 25.5, 26.7, and 26.4% for freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior, respectively. Over half (52.0%) of the respondents choose moderate as their political ideology and over 60% of Democrats chose the moderate ideology while almost 68% of Republicans identified conservative as their ideology (Table 1). A third of the Democrats also chose the socialist ideology. Eighty-seven percent of the student population identified as either Democrat (25.4%), Republican (39.7) or Independent (22.6) (Table 2). Females categorized themselves as Republican>Democrat>Independent while males political affiliations followed Republican>Independent>Democrat. Among students identifying as non-binary, they were nearly evenly split among Democrat, Independent and other political affiliations (Table 2). Overall, the majority of students choose moderate as their political ideology with over 55% of females being moderate (Table 3). Males chose conservative as their political ideology most often over any other ideology.

Table 1: Percentage of college students within each political party affiliation identifying in different political ideologies.

Table 2: Percentages of college students of different genders segmented by political affiliation.

Table 3: Percentages of college students of different political ideology segmented by gender.

Omnivore (meat and plant-based diet) was the overwhelming most popular self-described diet with 90% of all students in the category (Table 4).  A higher percentage of Independents chose the ovo-lacto vegetarian (eggs and dairy product included, not meat) and ovo-vegetarian (eggs included, no meat or dairy) diets compared to the other political affiliations. 

Table 4: Percentage of college student respondents identifying in different diets overall and by political party affiliation.

For stores typically used for food purchases, Wal-Mart, Publix, Ingles and Aldi have stores in close proximity to the university while the other stores listed do not have stores within 15 of the university which may explain why these stores were higher overall for preferred shopping locations (Table 5). Respondents were allowed to choose multiple stores in their response thus the number of times a store was chosen was tabulated for the calculating the percentage of store choices and the total adds up to more than 100%. A chi-square analysis of the four stores in close proximity to the university found no significant (p≤0.05) association between political party affiliation and store choice. In general, Republicans and Independents preferred shopping at Publix compared to Democrats and Libertarians, while Democrats and Independents preferred Trader Joe’s relative to Republicans and Libertarians (Table 5). There are multiple considerations that factor into consumer preferences including, but not limited to proximity of stores to residence, pricing and price promotion factors, product inventory, store appearance (cleanliness and display) and familiarity with store lay-out. However, it is important to note that two of the stores listed in the survey do not use traditional means to advertising and have limited product choices on their shelves for specific commodities (for example, one type of spring mix salad). On average, these two stores tend to have lower prices, but that did not seem to make them more attractive to students (Table 5).

Table 5: Percentage of college students that typically purchase food at the stores listed.

Less than 10% of respondents obtained their news from newspapers while over 50% listed other sources for news including the internet (Table 6). The percentage of college students listing Fox News as a typical news source was 49% Republicans and 2% Democrats. Conversely, the CNN party breakdown was 30% Democrat and 9% Republican.

Table 6: Percentage of college students that typically obtain their news from the sources listed.

All political affiliation groups were over 90% likely (extremely or somewhat) to vote in the next national election except for Independents and other categories (Table 7).

Table 7: Percentage of college student responses to the question; “How likely are you to vote in the next national election?”.

There was general similarity across political party lines on the likelihood of purchasing raw, unpackaged fresh produce with all groups over 70% likely to purchase raw produce except for the other category (Table 8). Similarly, over 50% of respondents from all political persuasions were likely to pay attention to nutrient facts on food labels (Table 9).

Table 8: Percentage of college student responses to the question; “How likely are you to purchase raw, unpackaged produce?”.

Table 9: Percentage of college student responses to the question; “How likely are you to pay attention to the nutrient facts on the label of what you are eating?.

Only 3.2% of Republicans agreed (strongly or somewhat) with having open U.S. borders while 30% of Democrats and 33% of Libertarians agreed with this statement (Table 10). Twelve and 38% of Independents and those in the other category agreed with open borders, respectively.

Table 10: Percentage of college student responses to the statement; “The US border should be completely open with no restrictions on who can enter.”

On the topic of abortions being legal with some restrictions, 86, 72, 83 and 81 % of Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, and other political affiliations agreed (strongly or somewhat) with this statement while only 32% of Republicans agreed (Table 11). Interestingly, for the right of gun ownership, 85, 80, 84, and 76 % of Republicans, Independents, Libertarians, and other parties agreed (strongly or somewhat) with this statement while only 52% of Democrats agreed with the right to gun ownership (Table 12). Thus, Democrats aligned with other parties except Republicans on the abortion issue while Republicans were similar to other parties except for Democrats on the gun issue.

Table 11: Percentage of college student responses to the statement; “Abortions should be legal but with some restrictions after the fetus can survive outside the womb.”

Table 12: Percentage of college student responses to the statement; “I believe US citizens should have the right to own a gun with a background check.”

There was overwhelming (>80%) agreement (strongly or somewhat) with the statement about supporting police except for the other political category (Table 13).

Table 13: Percentage of college student responses to the statement; “Police should be supported but prosecuted for misconduct.”

A greater percentage of Republicans (85.9%) and Independents (81%) than Democrats (66.3%) agreed (strongly or somewhat) about feeling knowledgeable about the foods they eat (Table 14).

Similarly, 80% of Republicans and only 51% of Democrats agreed (strongly or somewhat) that they eat a healthy balance of protein, carbohydrates, and fats (Table 15). And over 80% of all students and student within each party affiliation reported eating “fast food” 2 or fewer days per week (Table 16).

Table 14: Percentage of college student responses to the statement; “I feel knowledgeable about the foods I should be putting into my body to fuel it, and make an effort to implement what I know into my diet.”

Table 15: Percentage of college student responses to the statement; “I eat a healthy balance of proteins, carbs, and fats.”

Table 16: Percentage of college student responses to the questions; “How many days a week do you eat fast food?”.