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The paper aims to explore the food shopping and preparation responsibility in a sample of adults, average age 32.5 years.

A sample of 198 adults (81 men and 117 women) who were involved in a longitudinal dietary study self‐completed a questionnaire about their food habits. Chi‐squared analysis explored relationships between variables using SPSS (version 10). Open‐ended responses were analysed in QSR NUD*IST using a content analysis framework.

The majority of respondents were married or co‐habiting (79 per cent), 6 per cent were lone parents, 9 per cent lived alone and the remainder lived with parents and others. Significantly more women than men were responsible for food shopping and preparation (both p<0.001). Within shared households food responsibility was predominately a female dominated area, with a considerably higher proportion of women responsible for food shopping and preparation compared with men. Reasons given for this included aspects of time and work as well as women being more skilled in this task.

The study was a relatively small and homogenous sample, not necessarily representative of the wider UK population.

Identifies the enduring gender divide in food responsibility. Findings will be useful to health educators, policy planners and researchers.

In light of the recent focus on diet and health, this paper describes the reported shopping and food preparation behaviours in a sample of adults in their 30s at the beginning of a new century.

The UK public has been fairly resistant to health promotion messages encouraging reduced fat intake as a component of the strategy to help achieve the targets for cardiovascular disease risk reduction identified in The Health of the Nation and extended in Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation. This project is designed to test the hypothesis that a more positive message to eat more (low fat) starchy foods would be better received and achieve the desired dietary goals. Newcastle families, in enumeration districts in the middle three quintiles of the Townsend Deprivation Index who do not meet current dietary targets for fat and starch, are being recruited to one of three interventions designed to encourage and enable them to choose diets richer in starchy foods. Dietary outcomes are being measured at three and six months after the interventions. We are investigating the process of change through use of questionnaires and in‐depth interviews with both “achievers” and “non‐achievers”.

For a number of years there has been persistent agitation for the addition of fluorides to public water supplies with the object of reducing dental caries in children. Where fluorides are absent or below about 0.25 p.p.m. in water supplies, the incidence of dental caries is said to be much higher than where the fluoride content is about 1 p.p.m. and to this extent, dental caries is in inverse proportion to the fluorides present. Reports from areas in the United States, where State legislatures have made artificial fluoridation compulsory, would appear to leave no doubt that stronger and better teeth result. In this country also, Weaver's report comparing the dental condition of children in North and South Shields, where the natural fluoride content of the different water supplies enabled one of these towns to act as a control of the other town on the opposite bank of the Tyne, confirmed the work of the other observers. There is nothing really new in all this; it has been known and discussed for many years, although it is fair to state that it is not universally accepted. Many doubt the ability of fluoridated water to reduce the incidence of dental caries in every community and still more believe that the condition remains a diagnostic index of dietary unbalance.