The Star reports on a new study that found many men would choose a meal of spaghetti with meatballs over spaghetti with tomato and basil sauce. Why? The former meal appears more masculine.
These men take after the alpha male character Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor, played by Tim Allen. He starred in the popular television series Home Improvement in the 1990s.
In one episode, he showed viewers a "man’s kitchen" with a pantry full of beans and potatoes and a refrigerator with a butcher inside.
The new study was conducted by researchers at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwest University in Chicago. It suggests that men are more likely than women "to conform to gendered notions of food."
Men and women were asked to choose between "masculine" and "feminine" versions of food.
David Gal is a professor of marketing and co-author of the study Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche: Regulation of Gender-Expressive Choices by Men.
He comments: "When they (men) have extra time to make those choices, then they tend to incorporate the gender norms into their choices and they tend to choose the more masculine stuff — even if it’s not what they like more."