Survey Reveals Cornell Freshmen Have Common Sense

A recent article [1] by Cornell nutrition professor Jeffery Sobal and recent grad Dana Amiraian has been making the rounds recently. In the fall of 2007, Amiraian and Sobal administered a survey to 301 Cornell students in introductory biology courses. The survey asked students which foods they thought were most appropriate to eat on a date, and broke down the data by gender. There aren't any surprises here:

Women often named feminine foods (considered appropriate for females) as dating foods, but men were not more likely to name masculine foods (considered appropriate for males) as dating foods. Neat and easy-to-eat foods were often named as dating foods, while pungent foods and foods causing bad breath were named as not dating foods. These findings support the conception that dating scripts guide thinking about food choices to enhance impression management.

So it's more attractive for a woman to neatly eat a salad than to drop pieces of her burrito from Moe's Southwest Grill all over herself?

Cornell professors publish a steady stream of survey results, most of which don't get picked up by the mainstream media. But most of these surveys involve a higher degree of analysis than this one.

[1] Amiraian, D. E., & Sobal, J. Dating and eating. Beliefs about dating foods among university students. Appetite (2009)