- women do a lot of cooking because they have to care for children. Now the kids are removed so you don't have to cook by necessity - many people, but women in particular, have the money to eat out now, even daily. All money that would have gone to kids now goes to the self. - delayed marriage means a man now has an extended single life, past when he might stop tolerating the early 20s "bachelor" food habits typical of men of the past - cooking (beyond just manly grilling) became a technical nerd hobby with a huge internet audience. Women's existing cooking attention transitioned online away from magazines and TV, but they didn't seem to become huge converts to a hobby in the way men did - cooking is an attractive skill for a man to perform for a women; this also ties into the "no kids" thing because A) the woman isn't always cooking on her own, and B) the kind of cooking you do as a couple is different than the utilitarian cooking by necessity to feed a family every day. Men can cook only the cool stuff for date nights and parties and not batches of spaghetti and meatloaf for hungry kids Also related to this - "leftovers" seem to have fallen out of fashion and relevance. Economical cooking is for poor people and immigrants (you know, the kid-havers) while cool adults try to entertain themselves every day.