Gendered eating: men, women and food

Gendered eating: The truth about men, women and food - Editor's Pick - Life & Style - NZ Herald News

Yvonne talks about the differences in the way men and women approach food in the New Zealand Herald

In 1982, Bruce Feirstein published the bestselling "guidebook to all that is truly masculine", Real Men Don't Eat Quiche.

Eva Wiseman and Yvonne discuss gender, food and differences amongst the sexes

Bishop-Weston sees gender differences less in how people eat, more in how they think about their diets.

"Women have more emotional attachments to food - due to media pressure they attach guilt to carbs and saturated fats, and often feel a responsibility to eat healthily in a way that men don't," she says.

"Interestingly, though, I see a trend towards 'effort' that spans and unites the sexes. People are becoming more receptive to things that take longer. People are looking for an identity with their food. People are buying breadmakers. As everybody's lives are getting more stressful we feel worse, and we need more nutrients. So both men and women are getting scared into eating well."

David Bell, author of Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat, and senior lecturer in critical human geography at the University of Leeds agrees differences are cultural and nurtured, not genetic