(Chicago) Scientists can now say with more certainty than ever that there is a link between gender and meat eating preferences.
An article published this week in Nature Scientific Reports shows that this difference is almost universal across cultures, and is even more pronounced in more developed countries.
Researchers already knew that in some countries men ate more meat than women. They also knew that people in wealthier countries ate more meat overall. But the latest findings suggest that when men and women have the social and financial freedom to choose their diets, they diverge even more, with men eating more meat and women eating less.
That’s important because about 20 percent of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions come from animal food products, according to previous research from the University of Illinois. The researchers behind the new report believe their findings could help refine efforts to persuade people to eat less meat and dairy.
“Anything that could be done to reduce meat consumption among men would have a greater impact, on average, than among women,” explained Christopher Hopwood, who is a professor of psychology at the University of Zurich and the one of the authors of the article.
The work was funded by Mercy for Animals, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending animal agriculture. Mr. Hopwood assured that he was not affiliated with this organization and that he was not its defender.
The researchers asked more than 28,000 people in 23 countries on four continents how much of various types of food they ate each day, then calculated the average consumption of land animals based on gender identity in each country. . They used the United Nations’ Human Development Index ― which measures health, education and living standards ― to determine how “developed” each country was; They also looked at the Global Gender Gap Index, a scale of gender equality published by the World Economic Forum.
They found that with three exceptions ― China, India and Indonesia ― differences in meat consumption between men and women were more pronounced in countries with higher levels of development and gender equality. were the highest.
The large number and cultural diversity of respondents is “a real asset,” said Daniel Rosenfeld, a social psychologist at UCLA who studies eating behavior and moral psychology and who was not involved in the study.
The study doesn’t answer the question of why men tend to eat more meat, but scientists have a few theories. One is that, from an evolutionary perspective, women might have been hormonally wired to avoid meat which might have been contaminated, thereby affecting pregnancy, whereas men might have sought out protein of meat due to their past as hunters in certain societies.
But even the idea that men are hunters is tied to culture, Mr. Rosenfeld said. This is a good example of another theory, according to which societal norms shape sexual identity from a young age, and consequently the way people decide to fill their plates.
According to Carolyn Semmler, a psychology professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia who also studies meat consumption and social factors such as gender, the same cultural factors that determine gender influence how people respond to meat. new news.
Mme Semmler was not involved in this study. In some of her previous work, she has studied cognitive dissonance related to meat consumption.
In these cases, she said women who were presented with information about the lack of animal welfare in the livestock industry were more likely to say they would reduce their meat consumption. In contrast, men tended to go the other way.
One participant told me, “I think you’re trying to get me to eat less meat, so I’ll eat more.” »
According to Mme Semmler, meat can play an important role in masculine identity, as evidenced by the popular image of the man with the grill. She says presenting reducing meat consumption as a moral cause can be a tricky issue. However, according to her, people should be aware of the impact of their food choices on the planet.
However, they and Hopwood acknowledge that changing behavior is difficult.
“Men are hard to convince,” Mr. Hopwood warned.