James Wilks grew up with the idea that “real men” eat meat.
“Red meat, especially,” says the 41-year-old former mixed martial artist, who has black belts in taekwondo, kickboxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Not so long ago, an old bodybuilder friend visited him in Orange County, California, where he lives. “I walked into a restaurant with him – he’s 6ft 5in and 120kg, by the way – and we asked why ‘chick’n’ was spelled funnily on the menu. They explained that it wasn’t actually chicken: it was a substitute made from plants. We said, ‘What meat dishes do you have?’” But there weren’t any. Wilks and his friend had walked into a vegan restaurant. “We looked at each other, stood up and walked out,” says Wilks, laughing. “I literally couldn’t conceive of eating a meal that didn’t contain some sort of animal product. I really thought, not just as an athlete, but as a man, that you had to have animal protein at every meal.” These days, Wilks has retired from fighting due to injury – but he has become a black-belt man-food influencer to make up for it. In the Netflix documentary The Game Changers, co-produced by James Cameron, he pummels the idea that “real men” eat meat into a whimpering heap. Wilks first became interested in plant-based eating in 2011, after he tore ligaments in his knees and could no longer train. He started reading up on nutrition and was struck by the insight that Roman gladiators were vegetarians. The more he read, the more he became convinced that he had been “lied to” by the food industry.
“I thought that animals were where protein came from,” he says. “I didn’t realise that they were just the middle men and protein originated in plants. I didn’t realise they were doing us a disservice.” At one point in The Game Changers, Wilks goes so far as to compare the erections of men who have eaten a bean burrito to those of men who have eaten a meat burrito. The bean cohort proved harder in more ways than one. His discovery, as he sees it, is that all of the food he once thought of as “man food” is actually incredibly bad for you. If you don’t think that real men eat quinoa, Wilks’ fanboys – who now include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren and Mike Tyson – might like a quiet word with you.
You Are What You Eat
Our relationships with food and gender cut deep. What does it mean to be a man? I’m guessing that most of us are aware that there’s a little more to it than how much we can deadlift. But food is hardly straightforward, either. Ask someone why they eat the food they eat, and the answer will arrive wrapped up in family, culture, class, identity, and so on. Why do men eat the way we eat? Answering that question is a bit like trying to disassemble a fajita.
All the same, if you wanted a single image, it might be the Man vs Food presenter, Adam Richman, watching Tottenham Hotspur play at White Hart Lane, as Spurs fans faithful sang: “Adam Richman! He eats what he wants! Adam Richman! He eats what he wants!” Google “man food” and what you see is not a mixed martial artist eating seeds and leaves but Richman grinning amiably next to piles of meaty, greasy, doughy indulgence.
In a British context, “man food” conjures pies, steaks, burgers, fast food, greasy spoons, kebab shops, chicken shops, curry houses, beer, whisky, full-sugar Coke. It’s not the healthiest diet. Compare it to stereotypically “female” foods such as salad, yogurt, quinoa, muesli and Diet Coke.
Then there are the more general associations. Protein is male; sugar is female. “Eat what I want” is male; “watch what I eat” is female. Manning the barbecue is male; cooking pasta for the children is female. Coronary heart disease is male; anorexia is female. We know that all of this is silly: after all, women suffer from heart attacks and men suffer from eating disorders. I cook every single meal in my household, while my wife pointblank refuses. But these assumptions are hard to shake. A female friend complains that every time she orders a rare steak when she is out with a man, the waiter assumes that it’s for him.
“It begins in the home,” says London nutritionist Rob Hobson. “There’s still a lot of emphasis put on women when it comes to weight loss, and not on men. That contributes to the type of food that men and women feel that they should be eating. Ryvita was advertised to women. Commercials for low-fat yogurts always featured women.”
It’s not just marketing, but the wider culture, too. Veganism has long been perceived as feminine. Remember Piers Morgan’s theatrical disgust for the Greggs vegan sausage roll, which has since proved to be one of the great product launches? In 1982, the American screenwriter Bruce Feirstein wrote a book called Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche. It hadn’t even occurred to me that quiche might be effeminate. And yet that book sold over a million copies. “Could John Wayne ever have taken Normandy, Iwo Jima, Korea, the Gulf of Tonkin and the entire Wild West on a diet of quiche and salad?” wrote Feirstein. Absolutely – he could.
The Roots of the Problem
Perhaps we should blame Fred Flintstone and his brachiosaurus ribs. “Even on
The Flintstones, Fred would have eaten a massive bit of meat and Wilma a bit of salad,” says Hobson. “We are exposed to these stereotypes as kids.”
While The Flintstones is arguably more indicative of attitudes in 1960s California than the Paleolithic period, the idea of men as hunters (meat eaters) and females as gatherers (plant eaters) is deeply rooted. It’s only recently that anthropologists have overturned the assumption that supplying meat conferred higher status on men.
A 2015 University College London study of genealogical data from hunter-gatherer communities in the Congo and the Philippines found that men and women
“The way men eat is wrapped up in family and identity”
contributed a similar number of calories to the camp and enjoyed equal status. Men were active in childcare, and monogamy was the norm. Gender inequality emerged much later, with agriculture, at a point when most men had ceased to hunt.
Hobson notes that the man/meat link isn’t rooted in biological need. “There is a propensity for men to be drawn to meaty food,” he notes. “But that’s not because their bodies are craving it. It’s cultural.”
Men and women do require different nutrients, says Hobson, but they’re not necessarily the ones you’d think. “Women need about twice as much iron in their diet as men, because they lose blood every month,” he says. “For men, zinc is a much greater nutrient of need. It’s much more closely linked to reproductive health.” Iron is found in greatest quantities in liver, meat, pulses and dark-green vegetables. You’ll find the most zinc in shellfish, followed by meat, dairy and bread. But no one thinks of liver as female and mussels as male.
Culture Shift
Perhaps none of this would be a problem if these associations didn’t harm men’s well-being. We know that men’s lives are shorter than women’s by an average of 4.4 years, according to the most recent World Health Organisation data. There are numerous reasons for this (men smoke more, for example, and aren’t as good at driving), but higher male rates of cardiovascular disease and alcohol consumption, together with infrequent visits to the doctor, are contributing factors.
In the UK, more men than women are obese, though there’s not a lot in it: 67% compared to 62%. A 2012 report on eating habits called Global Gender Disparities in Obesity found that, in the developed world, women were more likely than men to eat (or say they wanted to eat) healthier foods but also consumed more sugary foods, such as cake and chocolate. Men took in more calories through meat, but excess calorie consumption was more closely linked to alcohol consumption.
Still, pretty much everyone agrees that, in Britain and the US at least, the picture is changing fast. “There was a time when men would have been embarrassed to eat healthily in front of other men,” says Hobson. “It was one reason why men were less likely to go vegan. But that’s changed.”
Restaurateur Neil Rankin says that he has barely noticed the male/female divide at his restaurants. In 2016, he launched Temper, where whole sheep and goats roast over a 6m fire pit. Last year, he added Simplicity Burger, a zero-waste vegan fast-food restaurant, to his portfolio. He doesn’t see the contradiction. “If you go into either restaurant on a Saturday night, they’re usually full of fit, healthy people of both sexes,” he tells me. “We certainly don’t get big beefy guys coming into Temper. I knew Simplicity Burger would be slightly more female-based, but the
“Men crave meat because of culture, not biology”
demographic has surprised me. It’s not strict ideological vegans; it’s mostly flexitarian guys and women who are [mindful of] their health.”
One of the peculiar things that has happened in recent years, he notes, is that these two formerly distinct food scenes have found a middle ground. Veganism has become “dirty”, revelling in deepfried, plant-based versions of man-food staples, such as chicken wings. By contrast, the meat scene has become “cleaner”, with a focus on provenance, high welfare and farm-to-fork eating.
“The fast-food industry has been quick to get into this market. The Greggs vegan sausage roll was genius. KFC has been an early adopter, too, and Deliveroo is full of takeaway salads. But local pubs and greasy spoons have been slower to adapt. The craft beer scene is still pretty laddy/geeky.”
When it comes to the ways in which products are marketed, things are changing, too, says John Clark of the Coley Porter Bell agency, who designs packaging for supermarkets. “We no longer get briefs to market products to men or women in a binary way. It tends to be much more nuanced,” he says. “When you look back to the 1950s, traditionally defined roles of homemaker and provider were all-important. From the 1980s to the
1990s, it became more about aspirational, lifestyle marketing. ‘Buy this product and you will be this person.’ Now, we’re more about tribes and interest communities. Gender is less of a defining factor. You might be creating a food that’s trying to convey energy, strength and resilience – but you’re not going to be nailing those down as ‘manly’ or ‘womanly’ qualities.”
Chewing the Fat
In The Game Changers, Wilks is not only keen to destroy the idea that meat is man food – he hopes to go one step further and create a new type of man food. “Everyone should be on this diet,” he tells me.
But to write off steak entirely is to take a binary view of nutrition. The film has come in for criticism for making tenuous extrapolations and cherry-picking evidence. A Men’s Health fact check revealed that Wilks’s claim that cow’s milk raises oestrogen levels and lowers testosterone in men was based on a single study that showed milk from pregnant cows lowered testosterone secretions (not total testosterone levels), temporarily, in seven men. Gladiators may well have eaten mostly plants – but gladiators were slaves, fed the cheapest possible diet.
According to Michael Pavlou, food engineer at male fertility start-up ExSeed, it’s the quality of our food that’s the ultimate decider. “Red meat can be highly nutritious. It’s high in protein, and it’s a great source of vitamin B12. But how much are you eating? Is the cow grass-fed, or is it industrially farmed? If it’s a burger, does it come with cheese and bacon?” Pavlou cautions against making generalisations: “We also have genetic predispositions. Something that is beneficial for me might be damaging for someone else.”
Incidentally, I sent an email to Bruce Feirstein, the author of Real Men Don’t
Eat Quiche, asking if he now recants his earlier position vis-à-vis the egg-based flan. I received this admirable reply.
“Back then, ‘quiche’ stood in for a lifestyle choice,” he wrote. “It was sort of the equivalent of virtue signalling through dietary choices. Today, we’re in an entirely different world. Great male cooks and chefs are famous the world over. Sir Paul McCartney – by any measurement, a ‘real man’ – is a vegan. Everyone realises that the world is filled with great local cuisines, that a diet consisting solely of steak, alcohol and processed food (or fast food) is probably not the best thing for either the planet, or your life expectancy.
“So, today, I’d say that what you eat, or don’t eat, is not an inherent indication of your masculinity – though I’m still not sure about kale and quinoa.”