Women’s Grocery-Shopping Skills: Courtesy of Eons of Evolution

Just like their distant ancestors in Africa, these women rely on their innate
instincts to select the freshest produce.

You know, it comforts me to know that I am not unique in my ability to scout out, bloodhound-like, the doughnuts and smiley-faced cookies at the local farmer’s market. It turns out, I’m at one with womankind.

Via here, I discovered this fabulous, Onion-quality article that's a rather definitive synopsis of a recent study that purported to assess women's versus men's spatial abilities.

According to the study by a team in California, women are just as good as men at navigating, but they only call on their mental maps when there is food to be found — and the more calories in a food, the more accurate they are at locating it.

However, both men and women are equally motivated to find our way, it turns out, when the destination involves, for example, a cream bun.

Of course, my snap analysis and extensive farmer's market research and experience suggests that it is much easier to remember the location of the one place that sells honey versus recalling where, among the twenty-five booths selling greens, you bought your green beens. (Can I remember from week to week which stall has the damn blueberries I like? No, I cannot.) And who knows whether they controlled for people who had been to the market before (booths tending to be in the same location week to week). I also wonder what the percentage is of women versus men who regularly frequent farmer's markets. And what percentage of men go alone, choosing their own produce versus those attending with wives and girlfriends, to whom they defer the important choice of what to buy or where?

But it's true, the grocery store is a vast wilderness requiring superb navigational skills. I know I'm not alone when, every time I whoosh through those automatic doors, I thank god for evolution.