Are women’s stomachs happier than men’s?

This week I had an amazing experience – I joined the W.I.N. Conference 2011 in Rome together with close to 1000 women and half dozen men coming from Europe, Africa, Asia, and North and South America. It is a conference about leadership exercised by women and this year’s theme was “Creating History”. I was amazed with the talents that all those women, and men, possess in different fields of expertise regardless of origin, race and age, and very much inspired by their individual stories and personal and professional paths. I was also very surprised with how much keeping a happy stomach meant to all these women, that were there to develop their leadership skills, and how it influenced their humor, concentration, performance and ultimately the evaluation of the event.

The ladies I met and talked to in the coffee breaks and during lunch and dinner shared my dissatisfaction with the food and beverages offered in this year’s W.I.N. Conference. All meals served at the venue where the event was hosted were far from the tasty Italian cooking. The wine was of poor quality and certainly did not represent the extraordinary wine industry of the country. Coffee was also not good – it came from several vending machines placed in the two underground levels occupied by the event, and not even at breakfast we could enjoy a true Italian cappuccino or espresso. Water bottles were scarce and I am convinced that if it weren’t for drinks and ice-creams offered by two sponsor companies, everyone’s stomach would be deeply unhappy. What a disappointment… The organization of the W.I.N. Conference has undervalued the importance of food and beverages to the success of their event.

Considering the participants of the conference were in majority women, I am lead to believing that a happy stomach is indeed important to women and, although I didn’t have the feedback from any of the few men in the event on this subject, a recent conversation leads to me thinking there may indeed be a gender specificity. My husband and I were invited to friends’ house for Sunday brunch and we talked about how much women – at least I and my (girl) friend – enjoy trying new restaurants, tasting good food and cooking good meals. The men reported that was not important at all and they just eat out to keep us – women – happy. However they admitted they like eating a good steak, but don’t care if they eat something else and care even less about the restaurant where they eat it. I wonder if, unconsciously, men just don’t want to admit that food makes them more or less happy and eventually impacts their performance.

I look forward to my readers sharing their opinions and helping shed light on this subject.

Eat well, be happy!

P.S. Today I baked a pear pie that I am sure kept my husband’s stomach happy considering that he ate more than half. I could also reconcile with my stomach since yesterday evening thanks to my home cooked meals. J