The ‘irony’ of gendered meat consumption
By Susanna Klassen and Sean Patrick Kearney
It’s fairly well understood that — as a society — we need to eat less meat. Conversations about healthy and sustainable diets exploded around the globe after the recent release of the EAT-Lancet commission’s report. The report calls for — among several dietary shifts, including an increase in nut consumption — major reductions in red meat intake, primarily by reducing excessive consumption in wealthier countries. Around the same time, the government of Canada released its long-awaited new Food Guide, also espousing a more plant-based diet (and prompting a similar eruption of commentary). While both documents still advocate some discretion to be used when making choices about what to put on your plate (there can be socio-ecological benefits to certain approaches to raising animals for meat, and socio-ecological costs to many plant-based foods), the verdict is clear: meat can no longer be at the centre of our meals.
Yet, like many of the complex sustainability issues we face today, there are a few important realities that complicate the proclamation that people everywhere need to reduce their meat consumption. Equity concerns are often raised about who should be eating less meat. Most often, equity is discussed in terms of wealthy versus impoverished or low-income populations: many of the world’s poor are malnourished and would benefit from more diversified diets, including eating more meat, which means that those in the Global North should be eating (far) less meat.
The benefit of increased meat consumption for food insecure or undernourished populations is generally tied to nutrient deficiencies, as well as anemia — a blood disorder where the body cannot produce enough healthy red blood cells, most commonly due to a lack of iron or vitamin B12. Meat tends to be a good source of both iron and B12. It is no wonder meat has been called “…the nourishing food par excellence, strong and strong-making, giving vigour, blood, and health… ” (Bourdieu 1984, as referenced here).
But there is another layer of complication to add to the prescription of ‘meat-free diets for all’. While there are imbalances occurring across borders and neighbourhoods, there are also imbalances within households around the world: men eat more iron-rich meat than women, but women suffer disproportionately from iron-deficiency related conditions such as anemia. Women actually need roughly double the amount of iron as men, and pregnant women need about four times the amount of iron as men. Though we couldn’t find global data on meat consumption patterns by gender, there is ample evidence to suggest that men eat significantly more meat per capita than women, and that women are more likely to be vegetarians. Data from the United States (summarized here and here) show that women eat about a third less meat than men overall, and around 42% less beef, far outweighing the differences in caloric needs between the two sexes. Another study in Finland and the Baltics found men were nearly twice as likely as women to consume meat on a daily basis. In Australia, a survey found women consumed a third less meat than men. Qualitative research from a variety of contexts has also illustrated the strong association between masculinity and meat, and the way that men who abstain from eating meat are rejecting dominant modes of masculine behaviour (see for example this study from Australia, and this one from Argentina).
Meanwhile, one in three women of reproductive age are anaemic globally (FAO, 2018), whereas men are less than half as likely to suffer from anemia (WHO, 2008). This means 1/3 of women may be suffering from symptoms that impair their ability to carry out the normal activities of daily life, including work capacity, with specific symptoms ranging from chronic fatigue and headaches, to heart problems and other complications, as well as depression and the inability to cope with stress. While rates of anemia are higher in developing countries, iron deficiency is still the most prevalent deficiency in the developed world, and remains a significant public health concern in countries like Canada, particularly among Indigenous populations.
While the nutritional and bio-medical sciences of iron absorption and utilization is complex (and we will leave this to the experts), eating more meat is one of the more simple and certain ways of increasing blood iron levels (although too much red meat is not good either, as it can lead to increased risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes). This is partly because the iron in plant-based foods, non-heme iron, is less absorbable in the human body depending on a variety of other factors, including presence of vitamin C (good for absorption) and calcium (bad for absorption).
But despite the clarity of the science around the significantly higher daily recommended intake of iron for women, it’s men who have — culturally and politically — had ‘reign’ over the domain of meat consumption. While eating meat and cooking it are often presented as culturally masculine, vegetarianism is generally associated with the effeminate. Indeed, across ‘Western’ societies, women are twice as likely to be vegan or vegetarian. Both phenomena can be linked to a multitude of reinforcing factors, ranging from health consciousness to multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns.
In the context of finite resources and impending climate change, plant-based diets are an important lever for decreasing our environmental impacts caused by animal product consumption, particularly red meat. Equitable development between the Global North and South has entered into this conversation (why should those who have contributed so little to the problem of climate change and are bearing the brunt of the impacts be forced to forego the nutritional and lifestyle improvements that we in the North have had?). However, the gendered nature of meat consumption coupled with unequal dietary requirements for iron is not a conversation that has been had in the sustainable food systems/diets literature. In more food secure populations in higher-consuming countries like Canada and the US, a man giving up meat during the week may yield the same environmental benefit as a woman going completely vegetarian (based on calculations made here).
We’re not suggesting that women should eat as much meat as they want. Excessive meat consumption (again, especially red meat) has been linked to a variety of chronic diseases (Willett et al. 2019 provide a good summary of this evidence). Also, eating meat is not the only, or even necessarily the most effective way, of increasing iron blood levels or decreasing risk of anemia. Some studies suggest that in certain contexts, (e.g. the Inuit in North America, or women in rural Mexico) increased intake of Vitamin-C-rich fruits and vegetables is an important way to decrease iron deficiency and the risk of anemia, and that limited access to fruits and vegetables have increased the risk of many communities to anemia.
Furthermore, gendered health inequities intersect with socio-economic status, race, and the legacies of colonization, which also contribute to shaping health inequities within and between communities. A survey of Indigenous communities in the Canadian Arctic showed that iron intake was significantly higher when people were able to consume their traditional foods, and that ethnicity and poverty in these communities were highly predictive of health status. Another study from Baja California, Mexico showed that women from households with lower socio-economic status were more likely to be anemic. Additionally, despite being from regions where large amounts of fruit and vegetables were produced, these women could not access fruit and vegetable products as they were exported to the US, contributing to their risk of anemia.
With that said, we feel like today in particular — International Women’s Day — it is important to critically reflect on the irony of gendered meat consumption, and the role it may play in reinforcing existing inequities in food security and nutrition around the world.
The United Nations has called for rich nations to cut their meat consumption in half to avoid catastrophic environmental consequences while allowing for poorer regions to catch up a bit and increase their meat intake. And yet, if men eat a disproportionate share of meat, is it really fair to ask both men and women to be making the same changes?
For those who are privileged enough to choose plant-based proteins that meet their cultural, dietary, lifestyle, and economic needs, it’s time to step up. Perhaps men should consider going a bit further to allow for women to eat a little more meat when they need it. To enable a more equitable dietary shift, it will be important to question the long held associations between meat, health, and masculinity. While these ideas may have evolutionary roots from our hunter gatherer pasts, they represent real barriers to “the great food transformation” that we need for a sustainable and equitable future.
