According to a press release from the American Society for Microbiology, there really are differences in what men and women eat. Survey results presented at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases showed that women were more likely to report eating vegetables while men were more likely to report eating meat - and greater varieties of both. The survey, conducted by the CDC FoodNet, asked 14,000 Americans about the food eaten over the past week. The Washington Post (2008) quotes Yale's David L Katz as speculating that although there may be a biological role "more obvious are cultural influences, which suggest that salads and quiche are dainty; hunks of meat manly."
The differences reported were not huge: 21% of men had eaten ham in the past week compared to 18% of women. The largest difference reported was on carrots, with 35% vs 29% of men. An exception to the trend was that men were more likely to have eaten asparagus or brussel sprouts. Men were also more likely to eat their hamburger rare and their eggs runny.
I wonder if men eat their food undercooked as part of their greater risk-taking tendencies, or due to greater impatience waiting for it to be done? *thinks* In the past week I have eaten 2 kinds of mammals, 1 kind of poultry, and 4 kinds of seafood. I've had ham three times, bacon once; the pig is "a wonderful, magical animal"1. The vegetables I've eaten are a narrower band, I suspect, but it's harder to count them up. I don't think I've eaten any carrots. I generally try to limit myself to meat at one meal per day, and not every day, but this week it looks like I didn't do that. You know, in general, I probably ate more meat when I was a woman. I also made all my attempts at vegetarianism as a woman. Who says there's more variation among men? ;)
see also:
3/30/2007 "Food Preferences: Boys vs. Girls"
3/6/2007 (Dan4th's personal LJ) - Quizno's "Meat" ads
12/15/2006 "Eating Patterns in Same-Sex Groups"
Friday, March 21, 2008
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3 comments:
Is ham a good thing to look at given the number of people who don't eat pigs for religious reasons?
@penny: I wondered about that, too. Unfortunately, I can't get at actual results until they publish. The story hit the news from a presentation, and the Washington Post was the only place I've found that quoted numbers. I'd love to see the effect sizes for chicken and beef, for example. I was surprised that they said more men ate fish.
I wrote to Dr. Shiferaw, and she was kind enough to forward on the complete abstract of the presentation at ICEID. This included additional results, which I quote:
"A total of 14,660 persons 18 years of age were interviewed; 5,595 (38%) men and 9,065 (62%) women. Men were significantly more likely to eat meat and poultry items such as duck or game hen (1.5% vs 0.7%, p<0.0001), veal (2.3% vs 1.1%, p=0.004), and ham (21% vs 18%, p=0.004) than women. Women were more likely to eat vegetables, such as carrots (35% vs 29%, p<0.0001), and tomatoes (37% vs 32%, p<0.0001); fruits such as strawberries (24% vs 19%, p<0.0001), raspberries (5.7% vs 4.2%, p<0.0001), and dried foods such as almonds (16% vs 11%, p<0.0001), and walnuts (12% vs 8%, p<0.0001). Of the 6 high-risk foods, men had higher consumption of runny eggs (8.2% vs 5.7%, p-value <0.0001), and pink hamburger (12.4% vs 7.7%, p-value <0.0001). Women ate more alfalfa sprouts than men (1.9% vs 1.0%, p=0.01). No differences by gender were observed for the other high-risk foods."
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