Attitudes Toward Food as Indicators of Subcultural Value Systems

The intent of this paper is to focus attention on the relationships of food habits to under lying attitudes and values of subcultures and to suggest a possible approach for studying these relationships. The specific research objective was to investigate the relationship of attitudes toward food to the subcultural variables of race, religious locality, and age of homemakers. The objective also was to relate these attitudes toward food to “American” value systems so that possible differences in subcultural value systems could be detected. Homemakers from a systematic random sample of two small towns with distinctive reli gious and race subcultures were interviewed. The following attitude indexes related to food were developed through the use of principal component factor analyses: Propensity to Change, Convenience, Frugality, Health, Social Status, and Sociability Aspects. Attitude index scores were subjected to least‐squares analyses of variance by the following variables: religious locality, race, age, age by race, education, and income. Significant differences by religious locality were found on the Social Status Index. Race differences were found for all indexes except Propensity to Change. An age by race interac tion was found on the Propensity to Change Index and an age difference was significant on the Convenience Index.