Study reveals that men do eat more meat than women

CHICAGO (AP).— From Chicago vacation From Europe, Jelle den Burger and Nirusa Naguleswaran ate at Dog House Grill: a classic Italian steak sandwich for him, grilled cheese for her.

They both think the way their genders aligned with their food choices was no coincidence. Naguleswaran says women are more likely to not choose meat and worry about how their diet affects the environment and other people. “I don’t want to be misunderstood, for men to feel attacked,” laughed Naguleswaran, who is from the Netherlands.

He noted that he loves to eat meat, but that Leaving her for climatic reasons was more important to her“We are simply naturally concerned about others,” he said.

They would be related

Now, scientists can say with more confidence than ever that gender and meat consumption preferences are linked. A paper published this week in Nature Scientific Reports shows that The difference is almost universal across cultures and is even more pronounced in more developed countries.

Researchers already knew that in some countries men eat more meat than women. And that in In richer countries, more meat is generally eaten. But the latest findings suggest that when men and women have the same social and financial freedom to make decisions about Their diets diverge from each other: men eat more meat and women eat less.

This is important because 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet come from animal food products, according to previous research from the University of Illinois.

The authors of the new report believe their findings could sharpen efforts to persuade people to eat less meat and dairy. “Anything that can be done to reduce meat consumption in men would have a greater impact, on average, than among women,” she said. Christopher Hopwoodprofessor of psychology at the University of Zurich and one of the authors of the article.

The work was funded by Mercy for Animals, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending animal agriculture.

Hopwood clarified that he is not affiliated with the organization nor is he an activist.

Researchers asked 28,000 people in 23 countries on four continents how much of different types of food they ate each day, and then calculated The average consumption of terrestrial animals by gender identity in each country.

They used the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures health, education and standard of living, to rank how “developed” each country was, and also looked at the Global Gender Gap Index, published by the World Economic Forum.

They found that, with the exception of China, India and Indonesia, gender differences in meat consumption were highest in countries with higher development and gender equality scores.

The large number and cultural diversity of the people surveyed is “a real strength,” said Daniel Rosenfeld, UCLA social psychologist who studies eating behavior and moral psychology and who did not participate in the study.

The work did not answer the question of why men tend to eat more meat, but scientists have some theories. One is that, evolutionarily,women may be hormonally programmed to avoid meat what It may be contaminated and affect the pregnancywhile men may have sought protein from meat given their history as hunters in some societies.

But even the idea of ​​men as hunters is intertwined with culture, Rosenfeld added. That’s a good example of another theory, which holds that social norms shape gender identity from an early age and therefore how people choose to fill their plates.

Rosenfeld, who stopped eating meat about 10 years ago, said his own experience in college “as a guy hanging out with other friends” illustrated the cultural pressure on men to eat meat. “If everyone eats meat and I choose not to, it can disrupt the natural flow of social situations.”

The same cultural factors that shape gender influence how people respond to new information, said Carolyn Semmler, a psychology professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia who also studies meat consumption and social factors such as gender. Semmler was not involved in this study. In some of her previous work, she studied cognitive dissonance around meat consumption.

Women, better informed

In such cases, she noted, women who were presented with information about the poor animal welfare in the livestock industry were more likely to say they would reduce their meat consumption. But men tend to go in the opposite direction, she said.

“One participant told me, ‘I think you’re trying to get me to eat less meat, so I’m going to eat more.’”

Semmler added that meat can be important to masculine identity — for example, the popular notion of men at the grill. And that presenting eating less meat as a moral cause can be a sensitive issue. Still, she said, people should be aware of how their food choices affect the planet.

But she and Hopwood acknowledged how difficult it is to change behavior. “Men are a tough nut to crack,” Hopwood confessed.

Jose Lopez, another Dog House Grill diner, said men should eat less meat, but he has generally seen the opposite.

“We are carnivores. Men eat like savages,” he said.