meat

Men Eat Meat to Feel More Macho, Study Says Veggies Look Like Eating Little Penises, Too

Men love meat. It’s an irrefutable fact. But why do we love it so? Could it be that we feel insecure about our manhood? A new study seems to suggest so.

A new UCLA study posits that one of the reasons dudes double down on carnivorous fare is because they think it makes them appear more macho.

A pair of psychologists, Daniel Rosenfeld and Janet Tomiyama, asked 1,706 Americans aged 18 to 88 about their meat consumption, their thoughts on going vegan or vegetarian, and their adherence to traditional gender roles. They found that guys who abided by masculine stereotypes ate beef and chicken more often, and were hesitant to consider becoming vegetarians. Dudes who consumed fish and pork, however, weren’t so wedded to traditional ideas of what makes a man manly.

“Shifting men’s perceptions of ideal gender roles away from traditional masculinity could lead to their reduced consumption of beef and chicken,” the study’s authors concluded. “A deeper understanding of gender roles may be useful to reducing public meat consumption for improved human health and environmental sustainability.”

While this study seems like it was meant to encourage men to reconsider their eating habits – and how society has shaped them – for some, these findings might just provide all the motivation you need to chow down on more animal products, if only to boost your dude quotient.

What the study didn’t consider was the phallic nature of vegetables. Who wants to be caught deep-throating a stalk of celery or a carrot, after all? We’ll take a bloody hunk of animal meat over a veggie plate any day.

Cover Photo: RossHelen (Getty Images)

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