Gender & Eating Behaviors

It's interesting that Alyssa brought up her parents because the first thing that came to mind for me was that my dad loves to cook and is great at it but he never does. My mom does most of the home cooking and besides help from us kids my dad stays mostly out of the whole food preparation thing. My siblings on the other hand are the opposite. My brothers and I as well as my sister enjoy cooking and with the exception of my little brother (who just doesn't know it yet) we have all worked in the food industry.

The messy model dictates that cultural rules and customs are right below our environment. And from what we've read and what we see as adults growing up in our American society is that men are traditionally the breadwinner and women are traditionally stay at home, take care of the kids and cook types. I think this starts in our "family" and "peer customs" but why? Why even after countless generations of "the way it is" haven't we stepped it up and brought the cooking gender bias to status quo? There are many more male chef's from what I see on TV and in my own catering kitchen so why is our society set on home cooking to not be a family ordeal? How can we change these perceptions and do more sharing of responsibility with making dinner?

It's very interesting that all of the vegetarian articles showed that many more women are vegetarians and vegans than men are. This type of restriction on eating would lead to the belief that women care more about what they are putting in their bodies and the quality of what they are eating. But the "foodie article" however showed that men and women viewed food as an intense pleasure in their lives and looked for good quality. And while not everyone is a "foodie", everyone cares about the taste of their meals. It's something most western's do three times a day and we can either take great pleasure with it or not. It's not very interesting that everyone interviewed loved food, wanted to talk about it and even read cookbooks in their spare time. But how can we get more people to think like this? Hopefully, it can start with our own peers and family customs.