Men think eating red meat is sexy

Men wanting to beef-up their love lives are drawn to red meat because it signals status and make them more desirable to the opposite sex, researchers say.

Blokes wanting to beef-up their love lives are drawn to red meat, researchers say.

Experiments into people’s food choices when they are motivated to attract a mate reveal men’s preference for meat becomes even stronger.

This is because they believe it signals status and makes them more desirable to the opposite sex, studies at Monash University and the Sydney University of Technology have concluded.

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In contrast, women tend to choose less meat when wanting to win over men, possibly because they focus on beauty and health — rather than status — to make themselves more appealing.

Study co-author Dr Eugene Chan, a senior lecturer in marketing at Monash Business School, said meat had long been seen as a symbol of status and wealth.

“In caveman times, meat was hard to come by and was consumed in order to be strong, healthy and powerful enough to survive,” Dr Chan said.

“That evolutionary link is not genetically passed down, but has been socially passed down and still exists today.”

The research involved more than 1600 men and women in Australia, the US and Britain.

In one study monitoring Australian university students, those men exposed to images of women in lingerie or swimwear instead of scenery images overwhelmingly chose a beef versus vegan jerky reward afterwards.

Research shows some men turn to meat when they want to impress women.

A second involving Americans found men who imagined spending a romantic evening with a highly desirable woman liked a beef burger picture more than a vegetarian version, compared with counterparts told to imagine a fun night out with a friend of the same sex.

The final test in Britain revealed sexually motivated men had a bigger appetite for both beef and pork tacos, but not tofu tacos.

The “Is Meat Sexy? Meat Preference as a Function of the Sexual Motivation System” paper was published in Food Quality and Preference Journal.

Dr Chan said the results could help explain why it may be more difficult to convince men to cut back on red meat for health or environmental reasons compared with women.

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