When it comes to eating habits, men and women reinforce the old saying they come from different planets: they have different tastes in food with men favoring meat and poultry while women tend to prefer fruits and vegetables.

The study was based on a survey of more than 14,000 American adults in 10 states of the Foodborne Disease Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) between May 2006 and April 2007. They were questioned about their eating habits, including high-risk foods for foodborne illness in the past seven days.

“We thought it would be interesting to see whether there were any gender differences. To our knowledge, there have been studies in the literature on gender differences in eating habits, but nothing this extensive,” lead researcher Dr. Beletshachew Shiferaw said in a prepared statement according to the Washington Post.

Dr. Shiferaw found that men were more likely than women to eat a wide variety of meat such as poultry and veal. For example, 21 percent of males had eaten ham in the past week vs. 18 percent of women. Women, instead, were more likely than men to eat vegetables and fruits. For example, 35 percent of women reported eating carrots at least once in the past week, compared with 29 percent of men. Thirty-seven percent of women reported eating tomatoes, compared with 32 percent of men. The difference remained the same when it came to fruits such as strawberries, raspberries and nuts.

In addition, men were more likely to eat risky foods like undercooked hamburgers and runny eggs, while women were more likely to eat alfalfa sprouts.

According to Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., the difference in eating habits between women and men is due mainly to biology, but also “more obvious are cultural influences, which suggest that salads and quiche are dainty; hunks of meat manly.”

“The notion that men and women differ systematically, if not altogether consistently, in food preferences has long been known. The issue was perhaps never captured more pithily than this: ‘Real men don’t eat quiche,’” the Washington Post quoted Katz.

Dr. Shiferaw said the information is important for public health officials: “The reason we looked at consumption and risky behaviors was to see if there was a statistically significant difference between men and women and if this information could be used by health educators to target interventions.”

The findings of the study were presented Wednesday at the 2008 International Conference on Emerging Infectious Disease in Atlanta, Georgia.