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ChristianKl comments on Organic food, conventional food - Less Wrong Discussion
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I usually treat 'signaling' as the null hypothesis for human behavior: if the behavior doesn't make sense on its own, I assume it is signaling.
If a person is attempting to maximize their health, there are behaviors that have a better cost:effectiveness ratio than buying organic. Most of the people I encounter who buy organic do few to none of these things.
If a person is attempting to signal some sort of association with a the "health-food/green-living/upper-class" tribe (one or all of them) then buying organic makes far more sense.
Having encountered more of the signaling behavior than the healthy behavior anecdotally, the signaling behavior is more likely. I haven't invested any real effort into proving this (People could just be systematically acting in a sub-optimal fashion, for instance) but given how much of what people do is signaling behavior, it is my baseline explanation.
I don't think there are many well known good health intervention that cost no resources besides money.
Exercising takes willpower. Buying organic food instead of the regular food takes no willpower.
I think that depends entirely on the relative availability and social status of buying organic. If buying organic food requires driving an hour and spending twice as much (which it can, if you live in a small town in the midwest or other similar situations) then it definitely takes willpower to buy organic. Similarly, if you have certain debilitating physical or psychological conditions, just buying food in general may take willpower (although the willpower cost between non-organic and organic may be negligible.) Also, just knowing that there are foods out there that you can't buy (given a pre-commitment to organic foods) can result in loss of willpower.
All things being equal, exercising probably takes more willpower than buying organic food, but there's nothing necessary about that in individual cases, and commiting to buying organic food probably uses some small amount of willpower, regardless.