For some strange reason, I've been discussing with friends the criteria they follow when making decisions about what they eat. Some people are primarily concerned with how tasty their meal is, while others care most about speed and convenience. In the middle are issues of healthiness, along with questions about the ethics, sustainability and possible environmental impact.
After thinking about what criteria I normally used, I came up with the following five general categories:
- Health: How good is this for me?
- Ethics: Is this locally grown? Sustainably harvested? Organic? Vegetarian? Ecologically sound?
- Convenience: Can I get it quickly? Is it easily obtained?
- Taste: Am I in the mood for this? Will it taste good? Is it yummy?
- Price: How much does this cost? Is it a good value.
Mulling over that list, it became apparent that I almost always put those items in the following order:
Health > Ethics > Convenience > Taste > Price
I suspect that I am not the norm here. I would guess that most people are more like:
Taste > Convenience > Price > Health > Ethics
So in order to help me understand how other people think about such matters, I decided to put together a pseudo-scientific survey. I'm hoping that I will get a large enough number of respondents to do some useful statistical analysis of the results. If you have about 2 minutes, please fill out the survey:
