Meal Monday
According to a recent article in the New York Times, home cooking is “in” again, mostly because of the troubled economy. Cash-strapped consumers are cooking from scratch more and avoiding expensive convenience foods.
You would think that this would lead to healthier eating, wouldn’t you? Not necessarily, say researchers. The healthfulness of family eating hinges on the attitudes and behavior of the “Nutritional Gatekeeper,” otherwise known as the person who buys and prepares food for the family.
Researchers have found that the nutritional gatekeeper influences more than 70 percent of what the family eats. This impact goes beyond meals at home and affects food eaten outside the home, such as snacks and restaurant meals. Interesting, right?
Theoretically, a nutritional gatekeeper with healthy food habits influences the whole family to eat more healthfully. So, theoretically, this is person to target to improve national eating habits.
Researchers at Cornell University’s Food and Brand laboratory wondered whether some nutritional gatekeepers are better able than some others to influence their families to eat more healthfully. The researchers also wanted to know if there was a way to easily identify these nutritional gatekeepers that are “most socially influential, inclined toward healthy behavior, predisposed to new foods, and eager to learn.”
Using interviews, focus groups, and a survey of 770 Americans, Cornell researchers looked at three “domains” by which they could categorize nutritional gatekeepers: food usage, cooking behaviors, and personality. You would think that looking at food usage or cooking behaviors would be the best way to pick out the healthiest food influencers, right?
Wrong! Researchers found that the “domain of personality most effectively differentiates between segments of cooks.” They found that 9 out of 10 great cooks fall into one of five categories:
• Giving Cooks (22%); Friendly and popular, these cooks like to stick with tried and true comfort foods.
• Healthy Cooks (20%); Optimistic nature lovers, these cooks are most likely to experiment with fish and with fresh ingredients, including herbs.
• Innovative Cooks (19%); Creative trend-setters, these cook cast aside recipes to adventurously experiment with ingredients, cuisine styles, and cooking methods.
• Methodical Cooks (18%) ; Talented if somewhat inefficient, these cooks slavishly follow recipes to create dishes that always look exactly like the picture in the cookbook.
• Competitive Cooks (13%); The “neighborhood Iron Chef,” these competitive perfectionist cooks are dominant personalities who cook in order to impress others.
The giving cook is socially influential, but not so likely to be inclined towards healthy cooking or interested in adopting new, healthy foods or habits. The healthy cook is a little too eager to sacrifice taste for better nutrition. The innovative cook is the one that best balances healthy habits with good taste.
Want to take the quiz? Go here.
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