What Are Engineers' Favorite Foods?

[Image Source: Pixabay]

Results

On the whole, there is a distinct lack of formal studies or surveys on this question. Searches show a plethora of food engineering websites, recipe pages and diet recommendations as you'd expect. This does seem to be a very popular question for crosswords. According to wordplays.com, a crossword answer suggestion website, the answer is "plumb pudding". This is probably a play on words for Sir Joseph John J.J. Thomson's atomic model, but hey, you might love "plumbs"!

For our selected sources, we used a variety of methods to compile the list(s). If a survey was conducted, we took the results in good faith. For forums, we used a mixture of simply counting the number of times a food type was mentioned. For forum posts, we simply listed the food items that were mentioned. Of course, this method is not particularly scientific but it's interesting nonetheless.

First and foremost this isn't intended to be an in-depth study of the eating habits of engineers, it's just a bit of fun. With that in mid let's take a look at what we could find.

Sample #1

One "survey" of robotics engineers in St. Louis, US does indeed reveal a penchant for meat. The surveyor Mark Colzani, works in a building jam-packed with engineers and he took it upon himself to ask this very question.

This "survey", though limited to a sample size of 138 engineers, does seem to show a trend. The results were as follows:

1. BBQ - 111

2. Steak - 11

3. Tacos/Mexican - 11

4. Fish - 1

5. Greasy burgers - 1

6. Pulled pork sandwich - 1

7. Pizza - 1

8. Curry - 1

9. Whatever my wife sets in front of me - Clearly a very wise and astute individual!

Being our only actual survey here, the results seem clear but may not be relevant all over the world. I personally can't stand Tacos, I love fajitas though.

[Image Source: Pixabay]

Sample #2

A quick browse through cookingforengineers.com showed a larger list of preferences, given its purpose as a recipe repository.

The most common food types appeared to be as follows, once again meat seems popular:

1. Fish  - 6

2. Pork - 4

3. BBQ - 2

4. Beef - 2

5. Chicken - 2

6. Thai - 2

7. Asian - 2

8. Dairy -2

9. Pie - 1

10. Pirozhki (A type of Russian "bun") - 1

11. Italian - 1

12. Lamb - 1

13. Coffee - 1

14. Biscuits -1

15. Noodles/Ramen  - 1

16. Poptarts - 1

17. Peanut butter - 1

Clearly, these results need to be taken with a "pinch of salt" but there is a definite trend towards meat-based cuisine from the forum topics. We would have expected coffee (we know it's a drink but it turns up all the time) or pop tarts to rank higher, but hey that's just us.

[Image Source: Pixabay]

Sample #3

After racking our brains for other relevant keyword searches, we came across therobotsvoice.com. It provides a handy list of ten food choices for "geeks", very very tenuous we know, but we like these foods too.

Ramen Noodles

Doritos and Cheetos (tie)

Pop-Tarts

Hot Pockets

Pocky - Japanese cookie dough type snacks

Bagel Bites and Pizza Rolls (tie)

Twinkies

Spaghetti-O's

Easy Cheese and Ritz Crackers

Pringles

Great, a distinct lack of "meat" here but a definite trend towards ready-made or quick to prepare foodstuffs. This we can completely understand when you have very little space in your day for "time wasting" activities like "cooking".

[Image Source: Pixabay]

Sample #4

We found another forum post loosely related to our question. Thanks to geekculture.com, comments on this feed show the following most commonly mentioned food items, some are no surprise, others might be. These are in no particular order:

Pork

Chicken

Spaghetti

Bread

Noodles

Fish

Soup

Pasta

Beef

Toast

Coffee/Tea - included as very popular though not a food

Cereal

Fruit

Chinese

Rice

Potato chips/crisps

Salad

Tacos

Burgers

Vegetarian

TV dinners

Chocolate

Sandwiches

Peanut butter

Stirfry

Mushrooms

Pizza

Sushi

Vegan

At last some vegetarians and vegans, a few of the usual suspects here and some new entries. As per usual on forum posts the members got a little sidetracked, on this occasion onto the subject of mushrooms. And why not, each to their own.

[Image Source: Pixabay]

Sample #5

We conducted a quick survey of our IE team too, well just the author.  Again a "clear pattern" emerged, ahem:

Meat

Noodles

Sandwiches

Fish

Soup

Fast food

Indian

Mexican

Chinese

Roast dinners

With an enormous sample size of one person, clearly, these results are statistically significant. Reading comments from other sample sources, it seems the author is not alone in their meat/noodle/generally-bad-for-you food preferences.

#notallengineers

Of course, with any survey/investigation, variables such as ethnicity, age, gender, location, sample size and culture will hugely effect or even skew the results. This is especially true of anything that relates to personal preference such as eating habits. Vegetarians and vegans seem to definitely be underrepresented in the above samples and is probably an artifact of the sites' targeted audience.

Discussion

Using our very scientific and extensive research (*cough), it seems to be clear that the key to an engineer's heart (apart from fast food and junk food) appears to be meat or fish. Noodles seem to be another popular food item, I certainly eat way too much of them. Caffeinated beverages, albeit not technically foods, also form a stable of an engineer's diet, to this we can testify.

So there you go, our quick report on the eating habits of engineers. How does your diet compare? What is your favorite food? Are you surprised by any items listed here? Do you think this is representative of engineers' food choices on the whole? Let's start a conversation and improve our results.

Sources: bastiansolutions.com, cookingforengineers.com, geekculture.com, therobotsvoice.com

SEE ALSO: 10 of the best reasons to date an Engineer