Comments on: Did Men Evolve to Hate Vegetables and Women to Be Vegetarian?

By: Brian MacNamara

Brian MacNamara — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 12:06:22 +0000

Interesting read. Have you ever seen a female butcher … ?

By: Ben Holmberg

Ben Holmberg — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 20:25:04 +0000

Thank you for writing this article! It is, first of all, merely stating the obvious which is actually a breath of fresh air. Other articles I've read state that more women are vegetarian are more compassionate which clearly sounds like a load of tripe. I have often suspected that for a lot of women, for them to completely forego meat in their diet would is about as difficult as it would be for me to completely give up fruit from my diet, which is to say a small sacrifice but not much.

peer pressure complete BS. more men would easily become vegetarians but too ashamed to admit it? By that rationale, I would rarely eat meat except when I am around other people just so that I can impress them by being manly.

Furthermore, even among non-vegetarians, look at the difference in dietary preferences between women and men. Speaking in generalizations, I have usually only heard women say that something has too much meat on it or that meat is too greasy. I have only heard women that have become vegetarians because they think meat is gross. Men that become vegetarians usually also do so completely as a moral choice. Then when you cite the evolutionary history of man's development, it simply drives the point home. Of course men were the ones that craved real meat so badly that they risked life and limb to kill and hunt for meat. Meanwhile, the women were willing to eat it too since it was already there for them on their plates.

By: George Henderson

George Henderson — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 02:28:27 +0000

Studies of ALA metabolism in healthy young men indicate that approximately 8% of dietary ALA is converted to EPA and 0-4% is converted to DHA (7). In healthy young women, approximately 21% of dietary ALA is converted to EPA and 9% is converted to DHA (8).
The better conversion efficiency of young women compared to men appears to be related to the effects of estrogen (6, 9).
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/othernuts/omega3fa/

By: TinaNelson56

TinaNelson56 — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:48:00 +0000

My dad thinks all veg*n men are fags which is very cruel of him I know. I
find some men are lykee my dad but Im sure theres a few guys out there
that care. I hate my dad so much hes sexist,racist and just plain cruel.
I hope theres not many men like him out there. My thoughts are its just
not manly enough for some guys. Thats all. Its sad because me and my
friend would love to find some vegeterian guys but theres none in our
school so thats that. The guys think we’re weird because of our beliefs
but whatever.

By: DAvidF

DAvidF — Wed, 18 May 2011 18:53:37 +0000

“The [almost certainly correct] hypothesis is that it was deactivated during a period of high dietary fruit consumption in distant primate evolution”
-and if we ignore the fact that raw meat and fat ( and particularly raw liver) contain significant quantities of vitamin C (liver as much as the equivalent weight of ‘neolithic; orange juice). Fruit in paleolithic times bore little resemblance to our highly sugared modern supermarket fare, and was seasonal. No need to postulate ‘high dietary fruit consumption’, since the availability of fruits in ‘distant primate evolution’ did not depend on Wal-mart.

By: sibyl

sibyl — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:52:49 +0000

In reply to PKA. All of the women I know who are vegetarians are motivated in part, if not in whole, by the belief that they will be 'healthier' aka THINNER as vegetarians, rather than a dislike for meat. In my limited observations, it's one part body image/ social pressures, and the other part is empathy for cute lil' animals.

By: @sourcEATarian

@sourcEATarian — Fri, 06 May 2011 03:41:09 +0000

Purely experiential theory here–but as a mother, I have noticed that I will opt to feed my children any "choice" or limited food, and then eat any remainder myself. This particularly applies to calorically dense foods and younger children. However times when I have been pregnant, lactating, or menstruating, I show no such generosity to my offspring (nursling excepted). Observationally, I have noticed other mothers doing the same, but I have not seen this trait in fathers; in fact, I have seen the opposite. (Picture above lion growling over meat and swatting away cub.) Women seem more inclined to sacrifice our own nutritional needs to protect our children (which interestingly enough women do while pregnant and breastfeeding), which may be a contributing factor in our ability to sustain ourselves better than men on plants and other less preferable foods. The empathy argument, I believe, would apply more to one's own (hungry) children that to a food source.

By: @tallbonez

@tallbonez — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 02:25:33 +0000

A vegetarian diet would have been impossible before an agricultural society, which in evolutionary terms happened "yesterday." Eating meat has allowed us to evolve our (calorie hungry) intelligent brains, which is also why the next two smartest animals on this planet are also predators. It's a simple evolutionary economics. Primitive people who didn't want to eat meat would have meager muscle mass (they would look rather sickly), and would not have been able to adapt to changing conditions as well and would be passed over in mating. It's evolutionary economics, in the primitive world of starvation, it would take one super forager to be able to cover caloric and nutritional requirements to be viewed as an attractive mate (sorry vegans, but most can't even do this today with out processed commodity foods)

By: Calvin

Calvin — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 07:44:04 +0000

What about the role of insects? This article http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.198… (sorry, couldn't find a free full text, but the abstract mentions this) says that "[insects] provided up to 12% of the crude protein derived from animal foods in men's diets and 26% in women's diets during one season of the year." This is in reference to Amazonian Indians, and of course diet varies considerably from place to place, but isn't it possible that if more women were doing the gathering than men, they would also be eating more insects, and thus getting supplementary protein without killing cute animals? Just a thought!

By: Great links for the weekend!

Great links for the weekend! — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:02:40 +0000

[…] got a good laugh reading a hypothesis that men evolved to hate vegetables and women to be vegetarian. Unfortunately this just doesn’t explain my complete obsession with steak, lamb, chicken, pork, […]