"Women have more emotional attachments to food -- due to media pressure they attach guilt to carbs and saturated fats, and often feel a responsibility to eat healthily in a way that men don't," she says. "Interestingly, though, I see a trend towards 'effort' that spans and unites the sexes. People are becoming more receptive to things that take longer. People are looking for an identity with their food. People are buying breadmakers! As everybody's lives are getting more stressful we feel worse, and we need more nutrients. So both men and women are getting scared into eating well." Another food trend that comes dipped in gender is the so-called "cupcake revolution". While the "fairy cake", as we used to call these palm-sized party snacks, summons images of angry four-year-olds pushing Smarties up their nose, the "cupcake" brings fragrant visions of a pre-feminist 1950s housewife, baking for pleasure. Alongside their appearance on Sex and the City , where they were fetishised to within an inch of their soon-stale little lives, cupcakes last year became fashionable in Britain too, with one fan (who, dressed as her alter ego Cherry Bakewell, hosts cupcake parties) describing them as a "real symbol of femininity, and a camp symbol of a bygone era". Here is the baked and ironic response, cupcake lovers say, to post-feminist culture. Similarly, Esquire magazine's Eat Like a Man blog celebrates "foods that men love and... ways that men eat", embracing the idea of gendered eating as a way of marking