Background Research
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As we were researching previous studies done on our topic, we came across a lot of interesting information. We used Google as our search engine and typed in “ice cream toppings” to start off with. From what came up we chose to use the article http://southernfood.about.com/a/ice_cream_4.htm . This gave us a list of various ice cream toppings and this is what we based our four choices off of. From typing in “most popular ice cream toppings” we found a website http://www.ice-cream-recipes.com/ice_cream_facts.htm that gave us fascinating facts about ice cream. One of the facts was that chocolate syrup is the most popular topping for ice cream.
Our study is intended to answer the question of whether the proportion of women who prefer chocolate syrup is greater than that of men. Using Google as our search engine, we typed in “women + chocolate” and found over 27 million results. Some of the articles that we found dealt with the comparison of women’s cravings of chocolate to sex. Despite this, we were still able to find information relating to our study. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web2/Slaughter.html . This website provided us with information as to whether people crave chocolate because their bodies and brains are addicted to the chemicals in it or because they have a psychological attachment to it. We also found another website that provided us with an article questioning why women seem to like chocolate more than men do: http://www.news.wisc.edu/13719 . This article states that women may seem to like chocolate more than men because of the rise and fall of estrogen and progesterone. It also states how chocolate affects the brain differently in women after it is eaten.
We used Google for most of our research but we searched “do women prefer chocolate more than men” using Yahoo and we were able to find something. http://www/seriousseats.com/talk/2008/06/comfort-foods-men-vs-women.html describes the differences in food cravings for men and women. It says that men find comfort in foods associated with meals prepared by their mothers whereas women find comfort in candy and sweets, chocolate for example. http://news.illinois.edu/gentips/03/07comfort.html is another website explaining the factors which affect the difference in comfort foods for men and women.
While we were searching the web for other studies done on our topic, we didn’t have much success. However, we were able to find related topics and those are the websites listed above. All we were able to find was information about why women crave chocolate more than men do. Reasons for this would be because women see chocolate as a comfort food. A majority of the links we found dealt with women’s love for chocolate and explanations behind this. While searching we also found various websites dealing with ice cream facts and on those we found that the most popular topping of ice cream actually is chocolate syrup. What we are trying to see is if women prefer chocolate more than men, but when we searched this all that came up was women’s cravings for chocolate and ice cream facts. Based on what we have found, and based on the results of our surveys, we could possibly attribute women’s preference of chocolate syrup to all of the information we have found. There are a lot of studies that have been done concerning the reasons why women crave chocolate, but nothing comparing gender preference of chocolate.