Impact of Gender on Food and Eating Behavior

When I think of meals being prepared, especially at home, a “mom” prototype pops into my mind. This is a woman who cares for her family’s health and wellbeing, a woman who is willing to slave over a stove all day to make her whole family happy. In today’s society, women still do a lot of work in the kitchen, but men are making a grand entrance into the world of cooking. When I was younger, if I was going to eat a home-cooked meal, a woman in my family would be preparing it. In my house, my mom was the only one who cooked. My freshman year of high school, however, when my parents separated, my dad had to step up to the plate and try his hand at cooking. He wasn’t the best at first, but he has definitely improved over the years. These days, he cooks most of the meals for my stepmom and stepsiblings at home.

So, why are men beginning to cook more often now? I believe that a big part of it is because they must learn to be more independent and domestic with the ways that societal roles are changing. Men are openly taking on many different gender roles now, some of which include homosexual relationships, single life (never having been married), single life as a divorcee, life as a stay-at-home father, and life as a single father. These are only some of the various scenarios in which many men find themselves today. When it was traditional for women to cook every meal for their families, men didn’t have to worry about cooking skills. But now, when a traditional wife is not in the picture, they do not necessarily have the luxury of always having someone around to cook for them. As is mentioned in the Cairns et al. article, men’s relationship to cooking has been traditionally defined as a hobby, a means of helping out in the kitchen, or as a professional chef. Men, however, are now called upon to take on a larger role.

When it comes to food choices, on a general basis, the females I know are concerned with health factors, nutrition, sustainability, and taste, while the males I know are more concerned with convenience, cost, and protein. Usually, unless the males are focused on body building and limiting their fat-intake, I know men to eat whatever someone will cook for them, what they can get from a drive-through window, what is the cheapest, and what they think will fill them up the fastest (which usually ends up being all the meat they can get their hands on). I know some guys who eat pizza on a daily basis (since it’s cheap and convenient), other guys who eat McDonald’s for breakfast every morning (I think it’s under $3 that they are paying for a breakfast sandwich and a large sweet tea… now that must be good quality food), and yet other guys who frequently eat all-protein meals (for example, 3 plain grilled chicken breasts for lunch and 2 steaks for dinner). On the other hand, the women I know usually end up going grocery shopping at either a supermarket or a farmer’s market, and they are focused on buying nutritious, fresh ingredients to use when cooking healthy, delectable meals. I am by no means saying that all men and all women act this way, but these are trends that I have noticed amongst many of my friends in their 20’s.

Why is it that men tend to be more focused on cost and convenience, where women are generally more willing to put extra effort forth for nutrition and sustainability? The Bellows et al. article states that food choice evolves from many different factors, including “cultural practice, tradition, ideology, values, preferences, resources, and the fundamental place of food behavior in daily life and family structure, and in accordance with education, age, and income.” I think that these factors definitely do play an important role in food choice. The people who I am thinking of all have very similar demographics, and so it makes sense that they would be similar in their food choices. Gender does have an impact on eating behavior, but because more people are becoming focused on sustainability and eating healthily, the differences in food choices between genders are overlapping in areas. While eating behavior does have gender differences, I don’t believe that there is actually a specific masculine or feminine way of eating.