Ever since the first day broke, men and women have squabbled about food. It started in Eden — over a single piece of fruit. In today's supermarkets, with thousands of foods to choose from, this age-old battle of the sexes has only intensified.

I married when I was 19 years old, and within 24 hours, my hubby and I had our first grocery store run-in. He was dead-set on orange juice in a carton; I was determined to save a buck with the canned stuff. Like Eve, and so many women before me, I never could have imagined how a single squabble could grow into years of befuddlement.

If shopping lists had existed in Eden, things might have turned out better. Then again, maybe not. After peering into the stone cellar and checking for bounty beneath every lily pad, Eve may have compiled a list, only to surrender it to Adam. But if he was anything like the men I know, there's no telling what he would have brought back. That's because of . . .

Perplexing Point No.1: No man can just bring home the bacon.

In college, my best friend had a reoccurring nightmare about her boyfriend. She dreamt that they married and had children, and she sent him to the grocery store with their toddler daughter to purchase milk. He returned a few hours later sporting a carton of orange juice and no child.

Lists are twine to tether men to the task at hand. Unfortunately, since they're almost always written on random scraps of paper, they're easy to lose. Liberated from the tyranny of his lady's list, the man recognizes the awesome potential for male prowess. Why simply bring home the bacon, my husband might ask, if he could also bring home an adventure?

John is a kid in a candy store when he steps through Safeway's automatic doors. He pounces on the very items most female shoppers avoid: dried fish, mint chutney, coconut ginger rice and banana-strawberry kefir. One time he purchased Korean food that I couldn't cook because I was unable to decipher the words or copy the photo on the package.

Sheer necessity drives women to produce lists — noodles need their spaghetti sauce, cereal requires milk, stuffing begs for turkey. Men are bored by necessity, but enticed by novelty. Listless men return from shopping trips energized by their ingenuity. Noodles are replaced by artichoke hearts, milk exchanged for broccolini, the sought-after turkey traded for a single hairy coconut. When my husband triumphantly returned home with a coconut, it took days to discern its culinary potential — finally John punctured it with a hammer and sucked it dry with a straw.

Which brings me to . . .

Perplexing Point No. 2: The Hunter-Gatherer is alive and well (albeit stalking his prey at Sam's Club).

Imagine your beloved dog bounding through the door with a limp chipmunk dangling from his jaw. It's not pretty, nor is it appreciated. Yet how can you not praise Fido for his find?

I'm convinced that women the world over face a similar dilemma when men return from the Stop-N-Shop. One time, when my husband and I stopped for a snack on an eight-hour car trip, John bounded back to the car with his find, quite pleased with himself. I had requested yogurt-covered pretzels, but as I dug into my sack, I came upon something more like Styrofoam packing pellets. Slowly, I discerned the monstrosity beneath my fingertips: bright orange, banana-flavored Circus Peanuts.

"When I was in line, a lady told me that she thought her husband was the only person in the world who ate Circus Peanuts," John said, a hint of pride creeping into his voice. "Her husband leaves them on the counter for months and then eats them! I told her there's probably an Internet support group for that," he said, glancing at me for approval only to meet my blank gaze.

Try asking the Hunter-Gatherer what attracted him to his prey. Then you'll see whose turn it is to be speechless. After I'd recovered my wits, I decided to move in for my own kill.

"So John," I asked. "What is it exactly that you like about Circus Peanuts?" No response. I decided he needed a little help. "Is it their flavor, their texture, the blissful experience of eating them?" I prodded.

More silence. Then he attempted evasion with one of his favorite techniques, used by introverts on extroverts worldwide. "What do you like about them?" he asked.

"Nothing!" I cried.

Finally, after much deliberation, I wrangled an answer from his clenched jaw. "If we left them in the car in March, they'd still be good in July!" he said.

Every now and then, women like me find ways to thwart the Hunter-Gatherer instinct. On that car trip, I gave John a taste of his own medicine by slipping two slimy Circus Peanuts into his water (which he nearly swallowed, to his horror and my delight). Still, women must realize that it's not just the contents of the male shopping cart we're up against; it is also the sheer quantity of items men inevitably purchase.

Which brings me to ...

Perplexing Point No. 3: Men don't buy in bulk; they buy by the truckload.

What collegian male can resist purchasing enough Ramen Noodles to sustain Sri Lanka when they're only a dime a package? What about White Castle's irresistible seven burgers for a buck deal? Apparently, White Castle did their homework in order to prove their burgers' nutritional value and to hook the twenty-something male. Several years back, they employed a scientist at the University of Michigan to feed a student nothing but White Castle burgers and water for 13 weeks (he survived). To this day, nobody's quite sure when (or if) the experiment ended.

Men don't seem to outgrow this propensity to pounce on obscene quantities of cheap items. My father can't resist a sale. When I say can't resist, I mean can't let a single sale item escape his cart. As a Diabetic, he can't drink sugary beverages, but when prices plunge on Diet Snapple, his cart overfloweth with the brown bottled beverage.

When he swaggers through the door with seven bags of Snapple, my mother is not exactly thrilled. But after 35 years of marriage, my dad is slowly learning to conceal his booty under the basement steps. By tiptoeing past my mother's watchful gaze with a few bottles at a time, he's able to satisfy his urge to binge on bulk items without compromising marital harmony.

Speaking of bulk items — remember the Y2K scare? Men were at the forefront of this movement. For them, the fall of 1999 offered unprecedented opportunity to revel in excess.

Think of it: rugged men crowding the aisles of Sam's Club, stockpiling hordes of nonperishable foods. (You can bet Circus Peanut sales hit an all-time high in December of '99.) A friend tells me that to this day her father is still none too proud to show off the three Rubbermaid garbage cans in his garage, brimming with tuna, baked beans, and Vienna sausages.

When the sun sets on the world as we know it, men will be prepared. In the meantime, however, women should do the shopping.