Food and Gender

Special K (not a client) is an example of a gender-aligned food product that has successfully honed in on its audience, developed targeted approaches that are relevant for them, and engaged meaningfully with them by providing advice, challenges, information and tips about healthy eating.

"[They've] created a community of women who are really there for the same reason. For them it's about body image and self-esteem – and they're comfortable around each other in that community.

"If men were in there, it might change that a little because it's quite a personal thing."

Far from exploiting female insecurities, she says the pitch is more about health and wellbeing: "It's not about being skinny. It's more about embracing who you are but making sure that you're healthy first."

She says we should expect to see more gender-specific food advertising – and indeed, gender-specific food product innovation – particularly as the population ages.

"Men and women have quite distinct nutritional needs, so it makes sense that products are developed around those needs ... whether it's women and calcium or iron, or men in terms of heart disease.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/food-the-last-battle-of-the-sexes-20111031-1mrdv.html#ixzz2PBFakRE5

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/17/gender-eating-men-women

Naming food to be tastier
http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/outreach/whatname.html

When in restaurants, people scan menus looking for benefits they believe will satisfy
their expectations at that point in time. Consider how people evaluate “Grandma’s
homemade chocolate pudding.” If they associate Grandma’s cooking as being flavorful,
they may combine their beliefs about the characteristics of Grandma’s cooking (flavorful)
with the characteristics of chocolate pudding (sweet and smooth). These expectations
they have about Grandma’s cooking can establish an affect state (Mela 1999) that can
bias the taste evaluation. Unless these expectations are grossly disconfirmed (Cardello
and Sawyer 1992), lab studies show that their post-consumption evaluation seems to
generally assimilated with prior expectations.
How Descriptive Food Names Bias
Sensory Perceptions in Restaurants*
Brian Wansink

Making Healthy Foods more convinient will make people eat it more.
http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/outreach/convenience.html

http://www.adiosbarbie.com/2012/02/the-gendering-of-food-you-are-what-you-eat/

Through a photo elicitation technique in which
participants were asked to identify “men’s foods” and “women’s foods,” our
interviews revealed two important facets of gendered food choice: first, that
interview participants denied both the existence of gendered foodways and the
notion that gendered discourse informed their own food choices; and second, that
the men and women we interviewed were not only aware of but often ate according
to gendered discourses of food
—“I Don’t Want to be Sexist
But…”
DENYING AND RE-INSCRIBING GENDER THROUGH FOOD
Deborah McPhail

While there was some variation,
participants generally identified as “women’s foods” sushi, stir-fry, couscous, chicken
soup, Korean food, fish, and spring green salad.On the whole, bacon cheeseburger,
Beef Wellington, potroast, hotdog, pizza and macaroni and cheesewere categorized
as men’s foods


Participants were not unaware of
gendered food discourses;ratherthey expressed resistance to be seen as endorsing
those discourses, as to do so would position them as sexist. Just as “color-blind”
is the preferred stance of white people in North America (as to notice race is
equated with being racist), gender blind is the preferred stance of most Canadians
(Jiwani, 2006; Razack, 1999; c.f. Everingham et al. 2007, for the Australian
equivalent).

Performing individualism through denial of gender effects allowed participants
to assert themselves not only as autonomous liberal subjects, but also as nonsexistindividuals (Jiwani 2006;Razack 1999). The gendered foodways subsequently
identified by participants—as stereotypical, but also often as true within their own
families—are thereby individualized, appearing to be “simply” foods that men or
women prefer. Through narrating food choice as nothing more than simple choice,
devoid of social context or meaning, patterned differences in food practices become
naturalized (Bonilla-Silva 2006). Thus, participants’ performances of food
individualism create a circuitous discursive event whereby inequities are
strengthened through the denial of their existence

Interesting discourse on food and women in food.
http://athome.harvard.edu/food/6.html