Every household has a cupboard best kept from prowling eyes. Few people, though, have any hangups about letting others see inside their fridge.
But new UK market research unveiled yesterday Wednesday shows that, if you don't want people to know too much about you, keeping your fridge contents secret may be the most sensible option.
A fridge packed with a jar of pickles, a chilled ready meal and last night's takeaway apparently reveals a lot more about you than just your unhealthy food predilections.
Similarly, a fridge stuffed with fruit juice says more about you than that you are simply a health freak.
Peering into the fridges of 400 people across the UK and comparing what lies within with the owners' lifestyles, researchers claim to be able to categorize the nation by fridge content.
They claim Britons can be split into five alliterative categories of fridge owners: "nutrition nerds," "food faddies," "martyr mums," "fast food fanatics" and "restaurant regulars."
Nutrition nerds care a great deal about what they put into their bodies, with fridges stocked with fruit, vegetables and organic meat.
People in this category tend to be highly organized and work in professions such as law or accountancy.
The vast majority of nutrition nerds are single, but if they have decided to couple up it will be with an individual who is similarly nerd-like.
A fridge with vitamin-enriched juices implies its owner works in the media or fashion.
They tend not to eat the foods they buy, but it is the purchasing that counts. They are categorized as the food faddies.
A fridge bulging with everything from steak to fish fingers hints at the martyr mum. Her fridge tends to be stocked with every conceivable product, apart from anything she herself would want to eat. This fridge hints at school runs and the difficulties of work-life balance.
Fast food fanatics eschew mineral water for fizzy drinks and the nearest they will get to fresh fruit is tomato sauce.
Such a fridge hints at someone who works hard and plays hard, but is not interested in long-term planning.
Finally, a fridge filled with nothing more than a bottle of Chardonnay and some sparkling mineral water implies an owner who is single, lives in a big city and enjoys the finer things in life.
Their fridges are empty because they eat so many of their meals in restaurants.
The research was carried out for Timestrip, a company which monitors food freshness.
Its founder, Reuben Isbitsky, said: "While we were developing Timestrip we spent a lot of time looking inside people's fridges and started to notice a pattern between their lifestyles and the food they bought."
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