What Americans Really Eat
What Americans Really Eat
A state-by-state analysis of the food-related words that Americans post on Twitter reveals some interesting trends about diet and health. Who knew that durian fruit was popular in Maine or flan on North Dakota?
What Americans really eat – and tweet
A state-by-state analysis of the food-related words that Americans post on Twitter reveals some interesting trends about diet and health. Who knew that durian fruit was popular in Maine or flan on North Dakota?
One of the most common criticisms of Twitter is that it is really just a bunch of people talking about what they had for lunch. And while this may well be true, it’s worth considering that what you had for lunch actually says rather a lot about you. In fact, tweeting about lunch rather than breakfast or brunch or dinner reveals something about where you’re likely to live, how you probably vote, what you weigh and your chances of getting diabetes.
Over an eight-month period up to May this year, researchers at the University of Arizona analysed more than three million food-related posts (pdf) made by American tweeters, and found that not only did the importance of each daily meal differ across the country (the Midwest goes for breakfast; the West Coast likes dinner), they were also able to identify the most popular food-related words in each state: flan, for instance, in North Dakota, capers in Oregon, potatoes (not wholly surprisingly) in Idaho.
The Diversity Of Favourite Foods A Cross The 50 States Is Striking
The diversity of favourite foods across the 50 states is striking. There are a couple of recurrent dishes – sauerkraut is the most popular food hashtag in both Wisconsin and Nevada, succotash a hit in Missouri and Rhode Island, and a vast swath of grits through the Southern states (as well as token northern appearances in Michigan and Pennsylvania and the disputed state of Maryland) is broken only by Mississippi’s fondness for tangerines. But there were still plenty of curveballs. How to fathom the popularity of the durian in Maine or the guava in DC? Why does Wyoming go a bundle for watercress, Iowa for cloves, or Alaska for tarragon?
The study went in further still, identifying popular food hashtags for cities such as Austin (tacos, bottomless mimosas) and Chicago (jerk, breakfast, BBQ). Furthermore it was possible to identify migration patterns via the spread of, say, Latin American or Vietnamese foods across the States.
Considering the tweeters’ location, as well as the language around favoured ingredients, meals and restaurants allowed the researchers to extrapolate further: a preserves-hashtagging Tweeter in West Virginia for instance, has a high probability of being overweight – after all, 33.5% of West Virginia’s population is obese. In vinegar-loving Colorado, meanwhile, obesity rates are the lowest in the nation at 18.7% of the population.
Quotes the Website mofongos page article
