Get a bunch of women together and you’ll find loud laughter, serious sharing and, often, some snacking too.

Why is this? Well, as described by Shelley Taylor in The Tending Instinct (a book we reference frequently for its relevance and revelations on female relationships and behavior), women just have a ‘relationship’ with food. We can base our self esteem from it – the “I ate bad food, so I must be a bad person” feeling, to the emotional eating like we “deserve” or reward ourselves with food. And, as the book noted, you will more often find food among a group of women than a men’s get together.

Frito-Lay understands the power of women in the blogosphere – and is using this social media/communication to share their findings and solutions to the feelings women have about snacking. Their new “A Woman’s World” campaign is the result of major research of behavioral and emotional issues that we women have with snacking.

As they say in the New York Times article on this campaign:

It (Frito-Lay) has researched women’s feelings about snacking and guilt to produce new packaging, new flavors and a new ad campaign, all in an effort to get women to eat Frito-Lay snacks.

We women have a tendency to apply a big bowl of guilt on ourselves for a lot of things – including snacking. Frito-Lay studied this and has launched (and will announce more food options) focused on women’s snacking habits and our health concerns and goals. For happy hours, girls night out, book clubs or bunko nights – we snack! We are a sisterhood of snackers (with twice as many snacks as men). And we inflict enough guilt on ourselves, right? Perhaps it’s time to give up some guilt and just enjoy some better options. They’re yummy. I know!*

Do you snack? Often? Alone? With your girlfriends? What are your thoughts on snacking?

* Full disclosure – Obviously I’m honored to have been selected by Frito-Lay for this trip to L.A. and the informative tour and impressive red carpet event. And, I will confess that we sampled quite a bit of Frito-Lay’s healthy (and some not quite ‘diet’ snacks!). We sampled Doritos and Frito’s hot ‘off the line’ – which were so yummy! As well as tasted several of their healthy snacks that have been or will be announced and released for public purchase. Thanks Frito-Lay!

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Tags: Doritos, Frito-Lay

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Be a Better Friend, Crafts and Creativity, Lessons from a Girlfriend. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.