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Previous findings indicated that college-aged women (compared to men) were more likely to use stereotypes when judging food names by their healthfulness. The present study is a replication and extension of an earlier study, using older (i.e. not traditional college age) participants (M(age)=46). In general, men had fewer and smaller discrepancies between their evaluations of food names and descriptions than did females. As previously found, gender differences occurred for evaluations of food names rather than nutrient descriptions, with women using less information than men. The stereotype women used when judging food names involved negative attitudes toward dietary fat, whereas men appeared to take account of vitamin and mineral content in addition to fat. The older sample was generally more accurate (i.e. had smaller discrepancies when judging food names and descriptions) than were the previous sample of younger adults. Also, the current sample of older adults used more characteristics when evaluating food healthfulness of descriptions than did the previous sample of college students, indicating a more complex strategy of evaluating healthfulness of food descriptions., (Copyright 2000 Academic Press.)

The current study had two goals: first, to examine the stereotypes people have of particular foods by having them rate foods' names and nutrient descriptions; second, to determine if men and women rated food names and descriptions differently, and to examine the characteristics used to gauge salubrity. Of 33 foods presented, 16 had names rated better than their descriptions (a positive stereotype). In 11 cases, foods' descriptions were rated more positively than their names (a negative stereotype). Therefore, people have expectations about food names that do not match descriptions of foods' nutritional contents. Also, names of particular types of foods (e.g. fruits) were often perceived to be healthier than their corresponding descriptions. Women rated certain low-fat food names as more healthy compared to men. In addition, women tended to have bigger discrepancies between food names and their corresponding descriptions than did men, indicating that women were more likely to have biases about food names that did not match their ratings of the same foods' descriptions. Regression analyses indicated that women used fat content when judging healthfulness of food names, while men used fat content and vitamins and minerals. Men and women used similar characteristics when judging healthfulness of food descriptions., (Copyright 2001 Academic Press.)