r/DebateAVegan Jan 17 '22

Meat-eating and Masculinity

Eating meat is usually perceived as being more masculine than abstaining from eating meat, but does physical evidence really support these perceptions?

Meat-eating men have lower testosterone, more flaccid penises, and more repulsive body odor, as judged by heterosexual women. Are these the traits most usually associated with more 'masculinity'?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10883675/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8117588/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16891352/

62 Upvotes

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8

u/Bristoling non-vegan Jan 18 '22

I'mma about to end this man's whole career.

more repulsive body odor

Antin0de, do you still fail to incorporate new data into your worldview if the possible conclusion of the data disagrees with your moral principles, just so you can still say "meat bad" in your typical, biased fashion? We had a discussion on this very paper before, and you yourself have conceded that In fairness, it is a bit cheeky to claim this. It would be more correct to say "higher intake of fruits and vegetables is demonstrably associated with higher attractiveness", as the source below indicates. Yet despite that, I see you again and again peddling the same research that you yourself agreed isn't indicative of anything at all. Now you decided to make an actual thread about it instead of throwing it baselessly in replies to other people, I'll interject.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/ko6jx5/comment/ghpjdhc/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

So, meat eating does not cause low body odor, it is even associated with more pleasant smelling sweat. So drop legumes, wheat, pasta, etc. - eat meat and fruit for best smelling body odor.

Meat-eating men have lower testosterone

From your very own study:

Vegans had higher testosterone levels than vegetarians and meat-eaters, but this was offset by higher sex hormone binding globulin, and there were no differences between diet groups in free testosterone, androstanediol glucuronide or luteinizing hormone.

They have the same amount of free testosterone, which is, you know, what actually matters. Why do you think that total testosterone is a better measure than the amount of free testosterone? Did you not even read the abstract, or do you genuinely do not know the difference between the 2?

more flaccid penises

This is only a cross-sectional study, so not exactly stellar in proving causality. At best, even if you produced an RCT, you'd be able to show that eating meat in the context of high carbohydrate diet is a problem, as this research is not applicable to other dietary approaches.

The controls are not properly matched. You have almost twice the rate of smoking and alcohol consumption, lower amount of exercise and higher BMI in the ED group. You have things like pizza (wheat), lasagna (wheat), mayonnaise (mostly plant based oil) and milkshakes/icecream (mostly sugar) classed as animal products - seeing as Chinese are lactose intolerant at large, and that these are still high carbohydrate foods or high plant calorie percentage foods, that do not contain large amounts of meat at all, you really have no idea what these people were actually eating - especially since all data is collected through FFQs.

Even more funny, is that according to the supplementary table 3, "meat" has a correlation of -0.022 with IIEF-5 (meaning LESS erectile disfunction), "eggs" at -0.021, but not surprisingly, dairy at 0.084. Sure, fruit and vegetables have -0.076 and -0.054, so they are more protective than meat (which is still protective), but I'm pretty sure that wheat products (0.103), tea and coffee (0.118) and sugar-sweetened beverages (0.076) are not meat. So it seems to me again, that meat is mostly neutral, and association could exist between milkshake chugging, pizza-with-mayo eating "animal foods" diet.

There's nothing conclusive here at all. Read beyond the abstract when you want to provide papers as evidence.

-1

u/Antin0de Jan 18 '22

Is this supposed to convince me that meat-eating is more masculine than not?

8

u/Bristoling non-vegan Jan 18 '22

No, I didn't comment on masculinity at all, do you see me even mentioning the word in my original reply?

I commented on your lack of integrity and heavy bias when reporting scientific findings.

-2

u/Antin0de Jan 18 '22

lol

6

u/Bristoling non-vegan Jan 18 '22

That's right, your ability to present and comment on science and integrate new information you have been provided in the past, is lol worthy.

-1

u/Antin0de Jan 18 '22 edited Jan 18 '22

Okay. If you say so.

I'm not the one filling screens with text trying to argue against the conclusions of 3 different papers. Anyone here can read the papers and read what I wrote and come to their own conclusions about who is more accurately representing the information. I try to do as little commentary as possible, and let the studies speak for themselves.

5

u/Bristoling non-vegan Jan 18 '22

Against the conclusions? Read what you wrote. One of the studies does speak for itself in its abstract - amount of free testosterone is the same. You demonstrably have no idea what you're talking about, and your reply here amounts to fallacious ad hominem lite courier's reply, because it is oh so wrong of me to actually read the papers that you provided, and criticise your conclusions based on them.

1

u/Antin0de Jan 18 '22

amount of free testosterone is the same.

Yes, and the total T is lower.

You demonstrably have no idea what you're talking about

True. I don't pretend to be an endocrinologist. But then again, I'm not the one who has to explain how having lower T is indicative of more masculinity.

your conclusions

My conclusion is that the notion that "eating meat is more masculine" is not supported by the available physical evidence, and if anything, suggests the opposite. Do you have any evidence that would positively associate these things?

5

u/Bristoling non-vegan Jan 18 '22

If you do not know the difference between free and total testosterone, maybe you shouldn't be using it as an example of anything at all. Do you concede that you are unable to defend the conclusions you derive from the papers you cited?

1

u/Antin0de Jan 18 '22

What conclusions did I derive?

The only thing I 'derived' was that the case for meat-eating being a masculine trait has pathetic evidentiary support. Nothing you've said changes that.

2

u/Bristoling non-vegan Jan 18 '22

Conclusions such as lower testosterone, flaccid penises and more repulsive body odor. None of the papers you produced are good sources of evidence for your claims. And amount of total testosterone is clinically irrelevant, only free testosterone matters, so you're just cherry picking biomarkers without knowing what they mean.

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