20 Mar 2008 7:28:00 pm

When it comes to food, men and women are from different planets

When it comes to food, men and women are from different planets

ATLANTA - IF men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then Mars is a land where the refrigerators are stocked with meat and frozen pizza and Venus has a bounty of yogurt, fruits and vegetables, a new study suggests.
The study of eating habits of American adults - called the most extensive of its kind - was a telephone survey of 14,000 Americans.

It confirmed conventional wisdom that most men eat more meat than women, and women eat more fruits and vegetables.

But there were a few surprising exceptions: Men were much more likely to eat asparagus, brussels sprouts, peas and peanuts. They also were bigger consumers of frozen pizzas, frozen hamburgers and frozen Mexican dinners.

Women are more likely than men to eat eggs, yogurt and fresh hamburgers.

Men also showed a little more of an appetite for runny eggs and undercooked hamburgers - two foods that health experts say carry a higher chance of contamination that can make you sick.

Women were more likely than men to eat only one risky food, raw alfalfa sprouts, which in the past 15 years have been linked to outbreaks of food poisoning.

The survey was done in 10 US states, a collaboration between state and federal health officials. The results were presented Wednesday by Dr Beletshachew Shiferaw, an Oregon health official, at a meeting of infectious disease experts in Atlanta.

Dr Shiferaw said she could not explain some of the odder findings, like why men eat more asparagus than women.