This rude food news landed in my inbox on Monday morning; it took me two hours to even work up an appetite to stomach the media release. Eventually I did get hungry!

Roy Morgan Research’s culinary-focused consumer profiling tool, Food Segments, which looks a lot like a pie chart in my humble opinion, found almost one-quarter of the population belongs to the Just Feed Me category.

Just Feed Me people are not interested in cooking, eating out or grocery-shopping and will simply eat what they’re given. Nearly 60 per cent of them are men.

The study found 17 per cent of the population fall into the Zappit category. Like Just Feed Me, they have no desire to slave over a hot stove, believing their time is better spent doing other things. They opt for easy-to-prepare food or even takeaway; men and women are evenly represented in the Zappit community.

The ‘Take-it-Aways’ (9 per cent) round out the non-foodie sector of the chart. This segment doesn’t understand why anyone would cook when they can place an order. 

Turns out there’s a whole half a pie packed with people I have not yet met!

However, the year-long research also found food is high on the agenda for the other 51 per cent of the population.

Food rates highly in my family’s pecking order (pun intended!): While eating breakfast we are talking about lunch and planning dinner for two days’ time; over coffee we’re considering weekend brunch; preparing for a hill climb, we’re thinking about which food supplies travel well!

Food features big-time in my memory bank too. While my sister-in-law recalls a wedding by which shoes she wore to it, I always remember the entree and cake. Her Manolo Blahniks are my spiced ground beef with coriander served in a betel leaf or baby creme brulee.

Back to that Pie Chart: ‘Trendsetters’ (9 per cent) favour new foods, new flavours and new culinary experiences. As the parents of two children under 10, we don’t belong in this category at this stage. Our four-year-old can spot chives in her scrambled eggs from 50 paces!

‘Entertainers’ (8 per cent) are fond of food’s social aspects, whether they’re throwing a dinner party or eating out at a restaurant. We only party hard four or five times a year for birthdays and milestones; other times we just feed our own faces. This is not our segment.

‘Old-fashioned Cooks’ (12 per cent) love a traditional home-cooked meal but are not big on variety, tending to buy the same foods and brands. I love the comfort food that Old-fashioned Cooks bring to the table but this is not exactly our category either.

Characterised by their love of cooking and enjoyment of grocery-shopping, people in the family-oriented ‘House Proud’ segment (22 per cent of Australians) are interested in food for both its taste and nutritious qualities. This category could be made up of my people but the title ‘House Proud’ seems misleading!

If pressed to choose a piece of pie to play, however, my family would chow down on a sliver overlapping House Proud and Old-fashioned Cooks. (In my husband’s family when someone asks you for just a sliver of pie, they actually just mean a normal-sized piece. It took me years to understand this nuance! You’re welcome.)

So if half the people don’t give a fig about homemade food, that simply leaves more pie for the rest of us. Relish anyone?