New food and lifestyle study

Group discussions with young women lead the makers of Blue Band margarine to consider that life style has more influence than socio‐economic grouping on eating and food shopping patterns. If, for example, two 20‐year old women have the same amount to spend on food, will one who is a university student eat the same as the other who is a housewife with young children? A quantitative study of 1,207 young women in four different life style groups (homeleavers, newly marrieds, housewives with young children and housewives with children of school age) has shown up certain differences in their food consumption and attitudes to food. For example, homeleavers are more likely to miss breakfast than the other groups, while more housewives with young children eat breakfast. When asked about the problems they thought they had with regard to food, homeleavers replied that shortage of time to buy and prepare food was their biggest problem, while not having very much money to spend on food was almost as important. Newly married women taking part in the survey claimed that their biggest problems were that the foods they liked best of all were fattening and they didn't have enough time to cook proper meals. Mothers with young children gave shortage of money as their biggest problem, though the fact that they liked fattening foods was a very commonly expressed difficulty. This last difficulty was also expressed by most women with children of school age.