How We Eat: Comparing Men and Women

How We Eat, similarities and differences

Eli Cherry

            “I recently observed a server bringing a middle-aged couple their dinners. Not sure who had ordered what, he looked at the plates, then offered the woman the vegetarian entrée and placed the beef dish in front of her male companion. What sort of gender profiling was going on here?”  It turns out that the waiter in this scenario, as described by Ms. Rachel Johnson Ph.D, was absolutely spot on.  She goes on to explain that one of the many differences in food selection by gender, is that men will often eat more meat and bread, while women often choose things like fruits, vegetables, and diet beverages.  However, this observation was clearly made at a sit-down restaurant with table service and large menus.  How would some of these differences in eating by gender play out in an inherently less healthy setting?  I found out during my trip to Anthony’s Pizza on East Evans Ave. on Friday evening.

            As I sat in Anthony’s, quietly enjoying my own pizza, the droves of people began coming through the doors trying to get their fix of delicious new york style pizza.  Groups of two, three, and four began occupying tables around me, and I started to notice patterns first in the gender makeup of these groups, and then in the differences based on the makeup of the groups.  For instance, groups that included women tended to focus more on talking than eating, and wound up taking much longer to finish their meal than men, even though they often ordered less than most men.  Johnson says that many women take smaller bites and longer to eat than men, and the smaller bites may be to accommodate and allow room for the amount of conversation expected in a group of women.

             I also noticed some examples of women watching what they ate more than men.  For example, I didn’t see one woman eat a pepperoni slice the entire time I was there, many women dabbed grease off of their pizza (interestingly enough, only when they were with other women), and per Johnson’s statements, generally ordered water and diet soda to drink.  I’ve noticed things like this in other situations too.  Even in our dining halls, I rarely see a girl drinking soda, and often groups of girls linger in the dining hall for over an hour while most guys tend to leave as soon as they are done eating.  I also see guys making 1 or two trips to get huge plates of food, while girls often make as many as 5 trips with less food on their plates, so as to appear, either to themselves or to those around them, that they are not consuming as much food. 

            Interestingly enough, Johnson points out that, “Women, generally, have also been shown to eat less when they are with a desirable male partner than when they are with other women.”  While I can’t attest to whether or not the women at Anthony’s considered their dining partners to be desirable, I did notice a strong relationship between how much women eat and who they are eating with.  I nearly always saw women eat only one slice when eating alone with another man, mostly saw them eat only one slice when with multiple men, but when with other women, generally chose to purchase the same amount as all of the other women.  They did not want to be perceived as eating too much by their female companions, thus only ordered as much as everyone else, and assuming men are supposed to eat more than them, generally chose to eat less around men.

            I think that one of the big problems with eating is that we use it as a way to judge people.  Many people make decisions on what to eat not based on what they actually want to eat, but rather what they want others to see them eating.  Men sometimes ate more around women than they did around men, so as to come of as manly and possibly “bigger”, while women generally chose what to eat based on what others around them were eating.  The value of food lies in its essence: it is food!  We need food to live, and we like to enjoy food, so there is no reason to feel pressured to eat what others may believe you should eat.  Eating is something that gives us satisfaction, and that value has slipped in our society and our culture.  Regressing back to the days when eating was for fun would be socially healthy for all of us!

http://www.eatingwell.com/nutrition_health/nutrition_news_information/his_hers_eating

Rachel Johnson, Ph.D, February/March 2006, Eating Well (magazine),

read online on Apr. 16^th, 2013