Salad Eating As A Personality Test - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 2001

Are you a dipper, topper, or a mixer? When it comes to salad dressings, a survey for the Association for Dressings & Sauces says, the way you use them indicates a lot about your personality. For example, people who dip their greens into their salad dressing rate themselves as being more spontaneous and outgoing than those who mix their dressing throughout their salad. Mixers see themselves as more sociable than people who simply dump their dressing on top of their greens and go at it. Toppers, however, tend to be more shy than their mixing and dipping counterparts. The survey shows that 49.5% of those surveyed are mixers; 37%, toppers; and 10.9%, dippers.

The frequency of eating salads gives clues about one's personality type as well. Those who do so at least once a week consider themselves more trustworthy than people who never eat salads. Heavy salad eaters (who eat salads five or more times a week) are less shy than those who do so less often. Also telling is at which meals you consume salad and what else you eat with it. If you eat a salad as your main meal at lunch, you probably think you are more intelligent than those who just eat a side salad at lunch. Those who consider themselves athletic typically do not eat salads as their main meal at dinner.

Regional differences are apparent, too. For example, southerners like Thousand Island dressing; mid-westerners choose French dressing above all others; and northeasterners prefer Italian dressing. People who live in the West aren't as likely to be mixers as much as individuals in other parts of the country, but they are the most likely to use salad dressings as dips for vegetables or chips and to utilize it in tuna, turkey, or chicken salad.

Sex and age play a role in salad eating, with men more likely to be toppers and the majority of women mixers. Seniors eat salads more frequently (3.9 times per week) than the average American. Generation Xers (age 18-34) do so 2.8 times per week. Among Americans who are heavy salad eaters:

* Italian is the number one dressing choice, followed by ranch and blue cheese.

* They like to make their salads from scratch--more than 73% purchase ingredients and do it themselves; just 20% buy prepackaged salads.

* They don't like to have any lettuce that is untouched by the dressing. Forty-eight percent evenly mix it throughout the salad before eating.

* Higher-frequency salad eaters have higher household incomes and are more likely to own their own homes.

* Dipping is an upscale phenomenon. More than 82% of dippers own their own homes and almost 70% have completed college.