Thanks for letting us peek into your kitchens, your shopping baskets and your dining rooms. The Good Eating staff is a nosy bunch, and is especially curious about how readers deal with food and drink from day to day.
After we ran a survey in the paper at the beginning of the year, asking about habits and preferences, more than 6,400 readers mailed in responses. The U.S. government is considering asking us to head up the Census 2000 drive.
The volume of mail makes sense; even people who don’t care to cook still like to eat, so everyone has something to say about food. Most everyone says they eat out at some point each month; others stay at home and cook with their favorite tools, which run the gamut from skillets to cheese graters.
Readers also shared the names of their favorite cookbooks: Mary Kay Montalto OF cHICAGO still gets the most use out of the “Fanny Farmer Cookbook” she received as a wedding gift in 1946; Michael Roper of Chicago relies on “La Cucina Siciliana di Gangiavecchio”; Niki Bartosiak of Skokie wrote that her primary cookbooks are “my brain and my Mom.”
Others had suggestions for Good Eating. Sue Bandman of Waukegan was hoping we would provide some personal details about the readers who responded, adding, “For example, I cook for a family of four; the kids are nine and 10.”
Liz Rosen of Chicago said, “The survey results will be interesting, but I hope you don’t just focus on the mainstream. I like the Good Eating section because there are some unusual recipe ideas there.”
And Angelina Simon of Elk Grove Village wants us to consider a column on “eating for one or two, since there are many singles and a lot of retired people who live alone.”
So what else did everyone have to say? And how do you, as a consumer, fit into the norm? Take a look at this typical reader profile:
You use shopping lists when going to the grocery store and if the item isn’t on the shelf, you aren’t deterred; most of you will hail a clerk for help or track it down at another store.
Cookbooks, friends and family members are important sources of recipe ideas, but you don’t hesitate to improvise when cooking. A good number of you are apt to buy natural or organic foods, and many visited a farmers market at least once last year. But when it comes to planning meals, you’re pretty square, choosing a meat, starch and cooked vegetable.
Nutrition information on ingredient labels does influence your decision to buy a product, and you rank nutrition at the top in importance for the food you eat. But when a high-fat, high-calorie recipe looks pretty yummy in print, most of you make it anyway.
And we were most heartened to learn that the majority of respondents share a family dinner four to seven times a week, whether the meal is made at home, in a restaurant, or carried out. Food is still king when it comes to bringing people together.
For more specifics, the Good Eating section revisits the questions posed in the Jan. 5 issue, with the highlights of your answers.
SHOPPING
Q: How often do you visit a supermarket each week?
A: Fifty-eight percent said they make 2 to 4 trips a week; but 6 percent drop into the store more than five times a week. Is it the free food samples?
Q: Do you take a list when you grocery shop?
A: Eighty-seven percent are reading from a list, while 12 percent like to wander around the aisles looking for inspiration.
Q: How often do you buy new foods or products?
A: Sixty-two percent said “sometimes.” A quarter of the respondents answered “often.” This is what keeps the food marketers in business.
Q: Do you use coupons?
A: Almost 90 percent wave those clippings at the cashier at some point. There was no word on how many of those coupons had expired by the time they were discovered in wallets.
Q: Did you visit a farmers market this year?
A: Sixty-seven percent said “yes.”
Q: How often do you shop at ethnic markets (for example, an Italian specialty store, Hispanic market, Chinese market)?
A: The highest number, almost 40 percent, said “rarely.” We’re going to assume this is because mainstream supermarkets have expanded their ethnic offerings and not because the specialty stores are dying out — at least, we hope not.
Q: Have you ever not made a recipe because it called for ingredients you couldn’t get at your supermarket?
A: Oops: See above. Fifty-eight percent would pass over the recipe rather than make a special trip for that unusual ingredient.
Q: Do you buy organic or natural products?
A: The majority of answers were evenly split between “sometimes” and “rarely.” We still see that as making inroads over 10 or 15 years ago, when organic and natural were almost impossible to find, much less buy.
Q: Do you read products’ Nutrition Facts labels? And do Nutrition Facts labels influence your decision to buy a product?
A: Yes, 64 percent read the labels, and 54 percent say the information “often” influences their purchase.
Q: If you can’t find an item at the store, what do you do?
A: More than half flag down a clerk for help, while 40 percent turn tail and head to another store.
Q: How often do you purchase food items from catalogs?
A: Sixty percent never shop through mail order, but 35 percent do it once a year, most likely at the holidays. (Somebody is sending that fruitcake.)
Q: How often do you purchase food items from the Internet?
A: So much for technology; 91 percent say they never shop through the Internet.
Q: Have you added a major piece of kitchen equipment in the past year (for example, a stove, stand mixer, microwave oven, etc.)?
A: More than 60 percent of respondents shelled out cash for some kitchen improvement, with the top three purchases being…:
1. Stove
2. Microwave
3. Refrigerator
Q: What factors influence your decision to buy a food product?
A: Brand name is at the bottom of shoppers’ concerns, while taste and nutrition are high, followed by value and price.
COOKING
Q: How many times a week do you cook dinner?
A: Forty-one percent of respondents cook dinner six nights a week. Are they getting any help in the kitchen? Less than half get a hand from another member of the household, with half of those helpers making just one meal a week.
Q: How would you describe yourself as a cook?
A: Almost 50 percent of our readers call themselves “avid” cooks, while a smaller number — 12 percent — describe themselves as gourmet cooks. Our sympathy to the 3 percent who answered “reluctant.”
Q: How important is a recipe’s nutrition information in your decision to make the dish?
A: Forty-six percent responded that the fat and calorie count was “not very important” and 39 percent dismissed it as “not important at all.” So there.
Q: Do you make substitutions in recipes when you don’t have the right ingredient on hand (for example, skim for whole milk, margarine for butter, all-purpose for cake flour, etc.)?
A: Almost 90 percent will just wing it if the right ingredient isn’t available.
Q: In the past year, have you taken a cooking class?
A: Ninety-one percent said “no.”
Q: How important to you are the following sources of recipes?
A: The top three sources of recipes:
1. Cookbooks
2. Friends and family
3. Newspapers
Q: If an expensive ingredient is called for in a recipe that really appeals to you . . .
A: Almost three-quarters of you would go ahead and buy the ingredient.
Q: Not counting your oven or refrigerator, what appliance do you consider the most important in your kitchen?
A: The top three:
1. Microwave
2. Mixer
3. Dishwasher
Q: What’s your favorite cooking tool?
A: The most popular:
1. Knife
2. Skillet or pan
3. Wooden spoon
Q: How many cookbooks have you bought in the last year?
A: More than half bought at least one cookbook and up to four a year.
Q: What is your primary cookbook?
A: The top tome for readers is “The Betty Crocker Cookbook,” followed by “Joy of Cooking” and “Better Homes & Gardens.”
Q: What ethnic cuisines do you cook frequently?
A: A whopping 86 percent frequently cook Italian; that’s a lot of pasta. Other top ethnic favorites, in order, are Chinese, Mexican and French.
EATING IN OR OUT
Q: How often does your family eat dinner
together?
A: Thirty-seven percent get together every evening, and 30 percent eat dinner together four to six times a week. “So how was your day?” was the top topic. (We just made that up.)
Q: Which of the following most closely
resembles a typical weeknight dinner menu?
A: Who knew so many people were getting a balanced meal? Ninety-one percent say dinner consists of meat, starch and cooked vegetables. For others — 8 percent — it’s just soup and a sandwich. We’re worried about the 0.2 percent who admitted to just eating beer and popcorn. Call your mothers.
Q: Which of the following most closely
resembles a typical weekend dinner menu?
A: The meat, starch and veg answer dropped to 61 percent, while soup and sandwich went up to 24 percent. There was a slight increase in beer and popcorn consumption, but that’s a little less surprising.
Q: How concerned are you about each of the
following as it applies to the food you eat?
A: Readers ranked them this way:
1. Nutrition
2. Safety
3. Appearance
4. Price
Q: Given the health warnings about raw eggs, unpasteurized juice, rare hamburger, raw oysters or raw fish, have you given them up?
A: The answers were split pretty evenly — about 20 percent each — between “entirely” and “mostly,” while 22 percent said “not at all” and 23 percent said “never ate them anyway.”
Q: Do you or any members of your family eat a primarily vegetarian diet?
A: Nope, according to 82 percent of the letters. This is a meat-lovin’ town after all.
Q: In a typical month, how many times do you eat at a sit-down restaurant?
A: Forty-three percent say one to two times a month, while 39 percent go out three to six times.
Q: In a typical month, how many times do you eat at a fast-food restaurant?
A: “Never,” declared 44 percent, while 38 percent go one to two times a month. Three percent go out for fast food more than seven times a month.
Q: In a typical month, how many times do you eat takeout for dinner?
A: Fifty-one percent get their dinner to go once or twice a month. A surprising 34 percent say they never do.
Q: In a typical month, how many times do you order a meal to be delivered?
A: Pizza sales must be down: 27 percent get meals delivered just 1 or 2 times a month, while 69 percent say “never.” A rebellion perhaps against all those menus littering the front steps?
DRINKING
Q: What do you usually drink with dinner?
A: Top answers:
1. Wine
2. Milk
3. Tea
Note: A number of readers wrote “water” and “soda” in the margins of the survey, two choices not offered on the list.
Q: How often do you drink wine?
A: Just 21 percent have wine daily; 30 percent have a glass a week; 28 percent drink wine just once a month, and the rest live by the saying, “Lips that touch wine will never touch mine.”
Q: How often do you drink beer?
A: Hard to believe, with the popularity of microbreweries and talking-frog advertisements, but 57 percent of our readers never drink beer. The next largest number — 23 percent — have one beer a month.
Q: How often do you drink other alcoholic drinks?
A: The martini is not dead, as least for special occasions. Forty-seven percent drink some kind of alcohol once a week, and 7 percent indulge daily.
