Food liking and craving: A cross-cultural approach.
Spanish and American participants rated how much they liked three common sweets and three common beverages listed on a questionnaire. They also named the food or drink for which they had the strongest craving. Cross-cultural comparisons in liking were almost always consistent with cross-cultural comparisons in rates of exposure. In both cultures, among subjects whose cravings could be so classified more females (about 5/8) craved sweet foods than savories and more males (about 5/8) craved savories than sweets. Among sweet cravers, chocolate craving was much more frequent for American females (44.6%) than for American males (17.4%), but no such gender difference occurred for the Spaniards (28.6 and 22.2%). The results argue for a possible physiological basis for the gender differences in sweet/savory craving but against a physiological basis for chocolate craving.
Zellner
D A
DA
Department of Psychology, Shippensburg University, PA 17257, USA.
Garriga-Trillo
A
A
Rohm
E
E
Centeno
S
S
Parker
S
S
D000328:Adult; D001628:Beverages; D002099:Cacao; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005260:Female; D005518:Food Preferences / Q000208:ethnology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012016:Reference Values; D012737:Sex Factors; D013030:Spain; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States