The concept that actual males should eat meat is an invention of the meals business

[ad_1] In January, a 24-year previous diet influencer named Jacob Smith made the grave mistake of changing into just a little too interested by tofu.

Smith had learn a research concerning the well being advantages of consuming much less meat and figured he’d attempt to exchange a small quantity of the animal merchandise he ate with plant-based meals. So, as content material creators do, Smith introduced his 170,000 Instagram followers alongside on his plant-based exploration.

In his first plant-based video, he filmed himself cooking tofu. Within the feedback, a few of his followers gave him useful recommendations on how you can make it higher subsequent time. However lots of people referred to as him the well-worn insult recognized to any man with a platform who dares to proudly eat tofu on social media: soy boy .

As a way to sustainably feed a rising world inhabitants, folks in wealthy international locations might want to eat much less meat and extra plant-based meals. However that’s confirmed to be a troublesome promote to males, a lot of whom consider that consuming meat is a part of what makes them masculine. The concept that actual males should eat meat is pervasive in meals promoting and popular culture, and its roots will be discovered within the “man the hunter” principle of anthropology, which argues that previous to trendy civilization, males dealt with the searching. The speculation has come beneath growing criticism, as researchers have discovered extra proof that all through human historical past girls hunted too. On the identical time, a rising motion {of professional} and novice male athletes have embraced plant-based consuming, arguing it helps them competitively — and doesn’t make them any much less manly. Cooking tofu was a departure for Smith, as only a few years prior, he had just about little interest in plant-based proteins. Early on in faculty, Smith had adopted what amounted to a carnivore weight loss plan — consuming a great deal of meat and eggs — and dabbled in different dietary traits. However he finally went again to a extra “regular weight loss plan,” he advised me, and went on to earn a grasp’s diploma in dietetics. Throughout his graduate program, he constructed a big Instagram following by explaining what he describes as “evidence-based diet,” overlaying analysis and debunking inaccurate well being info.

Though Smith has remained a meat-eater, the response to his tofu video impressed him to begin a collection of movies testing out different plant-based protein sources, like seitan and tempeh, cheekily leaning into the criticisms he was getting. “I began calling it the Soy Boy Chronicles,” Smith advised me.

The chronicles caught fireplace, every video racking up a whole bunch of 1000's of views and with them, a flood of indignant feedback.

For “virtually nearly all of haters,” he advised me, “their predominant critique about consuming plant-based is it’s going to make you could have extra estrogen and that’s going to make you extra female.” In fact, women and men each naturally produce the hormone estrogen, and consuming soy meals doesn’t change males’s hormonal make-up. Plus, it’s well-established that soy merchandise aren't solely suitable for eating but in addition confer numerous well being advantages, particularly when replacing processed and red meats . (And estrogen, it seems, could have been crucial to early people’ searching skills — extra on this later.)

<img alt="A shirtless man in the gym" data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/unnamed.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400"/> Jacob Smith within the health club. Brady Campbell

Some commenters stated his newfound curiosity in plant-based meals defined why he’s weak (he's, actually, quite jacked ), made his voice sound “female” (he seems like your common dude), or much more absurdly, that it could lead him to develop breasts or turn out to be homosexual. “I don’t even know the place these concepts come from,” he advised me, exasperated.

However Elina Vrijsen , who researches meals and communication sciences on the College of Antwerp, in Belgium, has some concepts about that. “Individuals most likely understand him as a really normative masculine man as a result of he eats meat” and he’s match, she advised me. “However then he breaks his boundaries of masculinity by consuming vegan meals, and for lots of people, this brings plenty of rigidity and plenty of questions.”

Smith has an analogous principle. If he turned absolutely vegan, he suggests, the criticism might need been extra tame. However “folks have extra need to defend themselves towards individuals who considerably eat like them,” he stated. He’s exhibiting a center floor is feasible — that one doesn’t should be vegan, nor endorse carnivorism.

In the future, only a couple weeks after he had launched the Soy Boy Chronicles, he tried to go browsing to Instagram solely to seek out that his account had been taken down. The explanation? In line with a screenshot Smith shared with Vox, Meta stated it doesn’t permit its customers to comply with, reward, or assist folks or organizations it defines as harmful.

Smith was confused. He by no means cursed in his movies and even talked a lot about politics, save for infrequent diet information, and stated he actually hadn’t promoted violence, prison exercise, or terrorism (which might have violated Meta’s phrases if he had). He described it as a “family-friendly account.”

Meta advised me the corporate reviewed his account and stands by the ban. “We reviewed and decided the right enforcement motion was taken for violating our insurance policies,” a spokesperson advised me over e-mail. The corporate declined to reply particular questions on Smith’s account and the way he had violated its insurance policies.

Smith has continued his Soy Boy Chronicles on TikTok , however he says commenters there are even nastier than on Instagram.

Placing apart the Instagram suspension and no matter brought about it, the backlash Smith garnered for consuming tofu is simply one of many newest examples of what can occur when males, particularly those that seem historically “masculine,” promote plant-based consuming. And Smith most likely gained’t be the final, as long as legions of individuals consider that masculinity requires heavy meat consumption and understand males who query that perception to one way or the other be a risk to the established order.

From the mid-2010s to the early 2020s in the USA, there was a quick window of time wherein plant-based eating was gaining extra common traction and many extra folks had been questioning typical gender norms. However quite a few traits recommend these cultural currents have modified course in recent times. American tradition has turn out to be more and more fixated on protein , particularly from animal-based meals; Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promotes a carnivore diet ; after which there was the additional rise of the so-called manosphere, a unfastened community of male influencers selling an intensified imaginative and prescient of masculinity that always entails excessive ranges of meat consumption.

However the perception that “actual males eat meat” lengthy preceded the most recent dietary and cultural traits, and it's so deeply ingrained {that a} small however wealthy educational subject has sprung as much as research it.

It’s rather more than a distinct segment mental pursuit, although.

Determining how you can cut back the consumption of animal merchandise in rich international locations is a urgent concern, as meat and dairy manufacturing account for as much as one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions and are the main drivers of global deforestation and US water pollution . International meat manufacturing additionally represents a moral atrocity , with a whole bunch of billions of animals reared in grueling factory farms .

Girls in Western cultures have typically proven to be more open-minded to lowering their meat consumption. However to result in wide-scale change in our meals system, nonprofits, teachers, policymakers, meals companies, content material creators, and others must determine how you can persuade the opposite half of the inhabitants that what they eat doesn’t make them roughly of a person.

The parable of man the hunter

The concept that “actual males eat meat” is a pervasive perception throughout Western cultures, and analysis within the US, Europe, and Australia bears this out. Research from these locations have discovered that:

Males eat more meat than girls and report having fun with meat greater than girls. Males who extra strongly conform to masculine norms report consuming extra meat and present much less willingness to cut back meat consumption (males who establish as more masculine are additionally extra immune to contemplating vegetarianism). Males are extra doubtless than girls to understand meat as masculine, whereas each women and men usually tend to associate meat with masculinity and greens with femininity. Once I requested a number of researchers how this perception got here to be so outstanding, all of them pointed first to meals promoting, which started to be segregated by sex within the Fifties.

That’s given us TV advertisements like Burger King’s 2006 “Manthem” commercial , wherein a man served what seems to be a plate of greens in a elaborate restaurant stands up and marches out whereas breaking into music, declaring he’s “too hungry to accept ‘chick meals.’” He heads straight to a Burger King as different males be part of him in music, pledging to “wave tofu bye-bye.” Burgers in hand, they march onto the freeway and collectively, throw a minivan off an overpass, a present of the power that meat offers them.

The industrial ends with a blunt message: “The Texas Double Whopper: Eat like a person, man.”

WeightWatchers (For Men) , Hummer , Slim Jim , and the American Meat Institute have equally over-the-top advertisements, whereas Manwich , Campbell’s Soup , KFC , and others have despatched the sign maybe barely extra subtly. The underlying message will be discovered past the realm of promoting and all through pop culture , too.

Even plant-based protein firms sometimes use this tactic , promoting with a “masculinized aesthetic,” Vrijsen identified. The businesses are, in accordance with Vrijsen, in search of to “reassure shoppers that lowering meat doesn't imply giving up your masculine identification…even when the product adjustments, the overall logic usually stays in place.”

The reply as to why such advertising has confirmed so efficient will be discovered within the subject of anthropology, which for many years has posited that all through the lengthy trajectory of human historical past, a transparent division of labor separated the sexes: The lads went off to hunt whereas the ladies stayed behind to securely collect edible crops and lift youngsters, a imaginative and prescient put forth in then-popular theories, akin to within the influential 1968 ebook Man the Hunter .

However some students have been poking holes on this broadly accepted principle. Two of probably the most outstanding critics of the “man the hunter” principle at present are Sarah Lacy , an assistant professor of anthropology on the College of Delaware, and Cara Ocobock , an affiliate professor of human biology on the College of Notre Dame, who’ve printed papers collectively on the problem.

Most searching didn’t appear like “a brilliant sturdy man by himself” engaged in a “battle of will towards a wooly mammoth,” Lacy advised me. Relatively, a lot of it was most likely mixed-sex teams who chased animals off cliffs, ambushed them from bushes and bushes, caught them in nets, and injured them with weapons, which made it simpler to chase them all the way down to the purpose of exhaustion.

Whereas this work required power, it additionally required endurance. And girls, Lacy and Ocobock argue in a 2023 paper printed within the journal American Anthropologist , are notably well-suited for the endurance wanted to successfully hunt, thanks partly to increased estrogen ranges.

“Throughout train, estrogen appears to encourage the physique to make use of saved fats for vitality earlier than saved carbohydrates,” the 2 wrote in a chunk for Scientific American . “Fats accommodates extra energy per gram than carbohydrates do, so it burns extra slowly, which might delay fatigue throughout endurance exercise.”

There’s “this emphasis that testosterone is the one hormone that offers folks an [athletic] benefit,” Lacy advised me, however “estrogen completely conveys sports activities benefits,” too.

Some archaeological proof additionally conflicts with the dominant “man the hunter” principle, Lacy stated. This contains prehistoric girls buried with hunting equipment and Neanderthal stays that recommend women and men had been doubtlessly facing off with animals at an analogous charge.

<img alt="an illustrated man flexes his muscles while holding a large portion of meat on a plate" data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Spot_Masculinity.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400"/> A lot of the “man the hunter” principle, Lacy stated, additionally rests on analysis right into a small variety of well-studied hunter-gatherer, or forager, societies, which solely tells us a lot. These handful of teams signify “such a tiny snapshot of the quantity of variation that may’ve been current all through a number of tens of millions of years of human evolution.” On the identical time, more moderen historical ethnographic and archaeological research , together with research into Indigenous groups , present loads of proof of girls searching.

This sort of analysis “challenges the belief that the hyperlink between masculinity and meat consumption has a transparent historic basis,” Vrijsen, the meals and communications researcher, advised me. “And as a substitute, it means that this affiliation is extra cultural than organic — and formed typically by ideology slightly than proof.”

Lacy and Ocobock felt this remark firsthand within the wake of their printed analysis. Whereas it was effectively obtained amongst their anthropology friends, Lacy advised me, some folks on the web had been incensed.

The overwhelmingly adverse public response got here from “predominantly males who had been simply so offended by the insinuation that searching is just not the particular factor” that they did that drove human evolution, Lacy advised me. “It was actually wild.” After Lacy and Ocobock had printed their piece on the subject in Scientific American, the journal provided them counseling “as a result of the response — particularly on Twitter — was so virulent,” Lacy stated.

Masculinity, with much less meat

Rob Velzeboer’s first glimpse into the dicey gender politics of meat got here to him when he briefly competed as a boxer within the mid-2010s. He determined to go vegetarian out of a way of responsibility to assist animals, and whereas his friends weren’t essentially hostile to the change — these had been real-life acquaintances and associates, not web strangers — they had been usually “very, very suspicious,” he advised me.

Velezeboer is now a researcher on the College of British Columbia, the place he research meat and masculinity, amongst different matters. These days, although, he’s turn out to be much less all for why this concern is so charged and extra all for determining how you can have extra productive conversations with males about it.

He’s at the moment engaged on a meta-analysis evaluate of quite a few research to have a look at how women and men react to totally different messages on the problem. Up to now, by wanting by means of dozens of research, he advised me that ladies are extra open to messages about harms inflicted on animals in meat manufacturing, whereas males are extra receptive to messages concerning the health benefits of plant-based eating .

In the meantime, different research by Velzeboer has found that some vegetarian and vegan males body their way of life by means of conventional American masculine norms, like: unbiased thought, rationality, self-discipline, well being, alignment between their values and conduct, and even as a rebellious act that demonstrates they don’t simply go together with the gang.

A few of these traits apply to David Meyer , an 11-time Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion and host of the Ageless Warrior Lab podcast .

“I’m suspicious of when tradition tells us we must be this fashion or that means,” Meyer advised me. “[Food] firms try to make one thing enchantment to us in a sure means, and we have to assume for ourselves.”

Meyer advised me that he thinks meat can actually be a part of a nutritious diet, however for him, he felt that eliminating animal merchandise from his weight loss plan many years in the past improved his personal well being and athletic efficiency. He’s additionally an animal lover, and stated he doesn’t wish to assist animal cruelty if he doesn’t must.

<img alt="A man breaking the world record by carrying 555 kilos for 10 meters" data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/GettyImages-180123982.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400"/> Vegan strongman Patrik Baboumian breaks a world file by carrying 555 kilos for 10 meters. David Cooper/Toronto Star through Getty Photos

“It really works for me, and I’m not saying it could work for anyone else, however plenty of the fighters that I work with have lowered animal merchandise and even dairy particularly, and so they really feel significantly better,” Meyer stated. But when for some males, consuming meat is a part of their view of themselves as being masculine, that’s high-quality by him.

There are many different skilled male athletes which have embraced a plant-based diet , too, like NBA gamers Kyrie Irving and Chris Paul , strongman Patrik Baboumian , tennis star Novak Djokovic , and UFC champion James Wilks , featured in The Game Changers , a documentary about elite athletes who occur to eat plant-based.

Dominick Thompson , a content material creator and longtime vegan with very massive muscle tissues, views his veganism, in some methods, as an extension of his conventional masculine aspect.

<img alt="A muscular man in the gym wearing a sleeveless shirt that says eat what elephants eat" data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/IMG_2017.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400"/> Dominick Thompson, a plant-based influencer, within the health club. Johnny Billups

“Irrespective of your weight loss plan, masculinity is about defending — being a pure protector of probably the most weak and probably the most weak,” Thompson advised me. “And that features not solely animals, however human animals — those who merely can’t shield themselves. To me, that’s a pillar of what masculinity actually is.”

After occupied with it lengthy and exhausting sufficient, all of it can get a bit muddling. Masculinity, femininity — these are squishy, evolving phrases that imply various things to totally different folks at totally different occasions, and are exhausting to pin down. Vrijsen, who’s carried out focus teams with younger males about masculinity, advised me they themselves usually have a tough time defining what it means to them.

That uncertainty would possibly clarify a few of the rise of the manosphere, wherein outstanding male influencers have stepped into the void to outline masculinity for younger males — and for some, like Andrew Tate , Jordan Peterson, and Joe Rogan , high-meat diets are a part of it.

It’s a giant shift from the place the plant-based motion was only a decade in the past, Thompson stated, when folks appeared rather more open to it. It was additionally a time when increasingly folks had been questioning typical gender norms. “However now I do really feel like lots of people are just a little bit extra close-minded” to consuming plant-based, Thompson stated. “We have now plenty of work reduce out for us.”

And Smith, for his half, continues to be posting by means of it together with his Soy Boy Chronicles, forging forward within the grey — usually viciously patrolled — on-line territory of what it means to be a person on this nation who additionally eats tofu.

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