July 17, 2019 • 38 mins
When it comes to gendered stereotypes around food, men are meat eaters, while women are laughing as they enthusiastically eat a salad. Why is that, and what does it have to do with sustainability and toxic masculinity?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
I never told your production if I hear radios how
stuff work. Today we're talking about something I've been wanting
to talk about for a long time, ever and ever
(00:25):
and ever and ever and ever, and that is the
gendering of food. And this could be so many different
episodes because today we're mostly focusing on toxic masculinity and meat.
How daintilly you said that? Yeah, that's nice, that's how
we should say how we say okay um, But we're
not talking about Brogert Brogert, which is why the favorite
(00:48):
still just mind blowing every time you say it. I'm
like why, I didn't know what that was, and I
was like, what is happening and why? Well, that is
a fair question, but I don't have an answer to
broy awesome girt. That's how I can't. We can't buy
any like yogurt that is in a white like container
(01:09):
because a white obviously means girl, yeah or feminine, right,
it's too clean, So that the kind of those specific
products as a different episode. Right today, we're gonna be broader,
and this gendering of foods is pretty a pretty big
deal because it directly leads to health outcomes like increased
(01:31):
risk of heart disease, and when it comes to animal industry,
too much meat has negative impacts for our entire planet
when it comes to global warming and sustainability. So pretty big,
huge yep. It also relates back to something we've talked
about before, the gendering of American political parties. Republicans are
(01:52):
masculine meat eaters and Democrats are a feminine salad eaters
or vegetarians or vegans. Remember all the push back against
Michelle Obama's like Garden and her School unsinitiative? What is
she doing? Or against um a c coming for your burgers?
Are all the news around Corey Booker being a vegan
(02:18):
heaven forbid? And these are actual quotes from Fox News
about this a lot your freezers savior meat? Now, are
the Democrats really trying to take the White House on
a platform of banning meat? He wants to impose his
meat rationing on the rest of us. When you're eating
a steak and you go, no, no numb, that is
(02:39):
so delicious, What does Corey Booker counter that with? Can
you not do num num numb on any other foods? Not?
According to foxes only steak only stay, which seems kind
of impossible anyway, because you can't just gum it, which
is what nominum numb sounds like to me. Yeah, true,
(03:00):
too much, no, no, not enough For my own personal
brief journey with gendered eating. When I was younger, I
ate a lot, and I played outside a good bit,
but I ate a lot, and I was a chubby kid,
and me and my brothers used to compete at who
could eat the most. But then a family member told
(03:21):
me it wasn't lady like behavior. Like I said in
a recent episode, maybe you should shop in the maternity ward. Um.
They said, you don't want to get made fun of
because you're fat, right, So I became very concerned with
people thinking I was fat, and I didn't like being
seen eating in public, and I still have real issue
around it. Sometimes. Um, I didn't like to fill my
(03:41):
plate first in any situation. I would watch what other
people did and get less um. And when I did
eat in public, I tried to eat something like a
healthy salad because in my mind that was a feminine
food that women eat to stay thin. And I had
internalized all this misogyny, and then it like reversed when
(04:03):
I went to college, because I would order the biggest
burger steak when I was out with people because I
didn't want them to think I was like, oh the
other girls, that would be terrible. And all the while,
like when I was by myself, I was heating hardly
anything to stay thin, and all of that gender bs
um wasn't about what I wanted or what was best
(04:24):
for me. And in doing this research, I realized that
I've seen this play out my family in other ways.
My mom and I eat way more vegetables and white meat,
whereas the men and my family eat way more red
and processed meat and carbs. Right, I think I've seen
the same thing in my family, but in a different way,
in which because it was a family mill, no mill
(04:44):
was complete without some kind of hearty meat. Like for
myself and my mom, we could be happy with just
eating vegetables or a vegetable plate, I guess um, but
we couldn't just have that. No, I don't think it's
just my mom, but just in general that's fine with me.
But in my mind, because of the way I grew
up and my dad was the bread winner, meat winner,
(05:07):
whatever you wanna call it. We had to have some
type of meat, whether it's just a hamburger patty, like
just regular hamburger patty or something along those lines. And
I remember if my mom was gone, which was very
very very rare, and my dad was cooking, it was
always a piece of steak. All he had would be
a piece of steak. And that's not even the salad,
I want to say. It was like steak and then
(05:29):
whatever else like chips that he could find. That was
the one thing he could actually cook. Only he can
grill too, but very manly ways. Yeah, and that's interesting, um,
when we'll come back to that a bit later. But
the whole like grilling, is the masculine of cooking. That's
that's the meat, all right. So first of all, transitions, Um,
(05:52):
all over the world, men have a lower life expectancy
than women, and there are a lot of reasons for this,
but one of the big ones for a lot of
places is diet. In general, women have better eating habits
than men, and the reason for that could be totally
unhealthy for a decent check of women. And you have reminder,
eating disorders and obsession about your weight both are not healthy,
(06:15):
but in general, right, women have healthier eating habits. In
the US and a boatload of other countries, researchers have
found that we associate bold, spicy, flavorful foods with men,
and soft, sweet, and healthy foods with women. I have
found that there's a kind of similar thing with um
(06:37):
men being able to handle their spice and women not
so much. I've seen that play out. Um But okay, yeah, men,
this is all like stereotypical. But men eat burgers and fries.
Women eats out and fruit. Men eat pizza and beer,
women eat salad because all we eat a salad and
yogurt and wine yogurt throwing them It's true. Uh yeah,
(07:02):
these are generalizations, but generalizations we see play out a
whole of the time in our media, in our lives
that we might have internalized. I personally feel like I've
seen a million times in movies or TV shows when
a woman orders a burger around a bunch of dudes
and they're so impressed with her right look at her
that she eats cheeseburgers to sheats beef, and she's finn wat,
(07:26):
He's the perfect woman. And then you get like Nick
Offerman's bacon loving character on parks and rec being just
the ultimate manly man. Um. The Seinfeld episode where Jerry
orders just a salad on a date and both the
waiter and his date are horrified shows salad. The Homer
(07:47):
sipsen quote you don't win friends with salad, right. And
I know there's definitely a lot of sitcoms that says
the phrase man meat or like and they really mean steak,
not just and you win no sword, right, but literally like,
I'm gonna be a man, so as a man weekend,
we're having steaks and burgers and blah blah blah and
(08:08):
beer stuff like that. Nothing out of swords, right, nothing
outside of the two food groups meats and beer. I mean,
can I live that way too? I wish I wish
I could live with that way and not suffer very
bad consequences of death. Something that's related to this, though,
(08:28):
are commercials and burger commercials I find are are big offenders, um,
like way over sexualized women sexually eating burgers. Um. And
that commercial you know is not men for women, is
for men because real men eat burgers and all they
(08:50):
want to see is a girl on a car, half
naked eating a burger. Yes, correct, that's what I understand.
That's what these commercials are telling me. Um as marketed
to word men use over sexualized women to time meat
to sex all the time. One adrom Burger King had
a skimply clad model with a burger between her parted
lips and like she was lying on her stomach, so
(09:12):
it was profile and um. The caption red, It'll blow
your mind. Yeah, Taco bells men love Bacon campaign. Every
Carl's Junior ad that's ever been made, the Burger King
ad that featured X Men's mystique turning into a buff
dude after eating a burger with a tagline man up
(09:35):
of course, you know. And just the same with Carl's
Junior and Hardies because they were one and the same essentially,
uh and Arby's. They use that overtly aggressive voiceover. Have
you noticed that what everything's like? And it always you
have to eat this kind of that. Yeah, that was
my impression of that, because that's all I could think of,
was like, and then it's so whatever the sound effects
(09:56):
the burger slams down like it weighs two thousand tons,
like it's a Trucker's right, I'm always like, why it's
hardy it's hearty and delicious. And I'm like, but it's
just fried air foods, frid aired, you know, that's why
do they go fries. There's no real you know, delicious. Still, yeah,
what is it? What is Rvy's We have the meats say.
(10:21):
Another study found people are more likely to spring for
unhealthy food if it's wrapped in masculine packaging, and they're
more likely to spring for healthier food with feminine packaging. Okay,
And that same study found that the exact same blueberry muffins,
one presented in masculine packaging, the other in feminine packaging
(10:42):
with the word healthy on both of them. Respondents reported
the one with a masculine baggaging tasting better. Mm hmmm,
because I think they assume it must be unhealthier even
though it's healthy, right, I don't know. People people, people
but with stricter definitions or differentiations when it comes to
(11:03):
gender are more likely to reflect that and they're eating
habits and choices. And one study found that even bringing
up masculinity or femininity impacted people's food choices. When masculinity
was invoked, people chose the less healthy option. The opposite
was true for femininity. And I know we've all heard
about the studies showing that male vegetarians are seen as
(11:26):
less manly men are socialized to eat meat. One Twitter
poll directed at men found that when asked what was
keeping them from being van fort responded with social stigma
and thirty nine answered masculinity. And we see that in
the terms sway, boy, I've never heard that term fortunate,
(11:49):
never good cell. It brings us to the question why
do we see meat as this manly thing. A survey
cross several languages looking into whether respondents thought of food
word was more masculine or feminine. Overwhelmingly, meat products were
associated with men. Almost of people labeled the hamburger as masculine.
(12:14):
The same research found that meters were seen as more
masculine than non meat eaters. And yes, men do eat
more meat than women, and women make up a majority
of vegetarians and vegans. And there are a few things
that play here, some of which go way back um
dominance and power over another creature, eating your enemy. That
(12:35):
whole idea In French sociologist Pierre Bordeaux described men as
quote the natural meeters meet the nourishing food par excellence,
strong and strong, making giving bigger blood and health is
the dish for the men who take a second helping,
whereas women are satisfied with a small portion. Okay, A
(12:56):
study from pointed to chemical signature on thousand year old
bones to trace the rise of the patriarchy. Yep, because
ten thousand years ago, as agriculture was on the rise,
men and women ate the same stuff. Researchers know this
from bone analyzes. But when the Bronze Age rolled around,
women were primarily eating wheat and barley and men were
(13:19):
on a steady diet of animal products. At the same time,
women's bones were buried with less treasure, which researchers think
is another indicator in decreased status when compared to men.
In more recent history, before women were allowed to work
and meat could be um an expensive luxury for working
class families, it was common for the men of the
(13:40):
family to get the first and largest portion of meat,
since he needed the strength for working. How that sounds
like the same idea doing like thanksgiving, the man the
house is the one that cuts the meat. Yeah, that's
always been a weird thing to me. I didn't understand
why that was such a huge Uh. Patriarchal thing that
(14:02):
needed to be done in staid. Yeah, I didn't know.
In my family, that is not how it is. My
mom carves. There's no tradition for us when it's carved meat.
Let's just meat. I just always thought that was the
idea of It made me angry. In theory, it's like
one last thing for my mom to do. But on
(14:24):
the other hand, she did everything else, so I don't
see why. It's like the man gets to present the
honor of Yeah, like this thing that you put all
this work into, Yeah, I'll take it in. I don't
know about that. Carol J. Adams's book The Sexual Politics
of Meat a feminist vegetarian critical theory debut and got
(14:48):
quite a lot of media attention. The cover was illustrative
of one of the main points of the book. It
depicts the back of a naked woman sectioned out by
parts like we often see for meat, you know, like ribs,
chuck around, The point being both women and animals are
marketed and consumed from her site. The Sexual Politics of
(15:11):
Meat argues that male dominance and animals oppressions are linked
by the way that both women and animals function as
absent reference and meat eating and dairy production, and that
feminist theory logically contains a vegan critique, just as veganism
covertly challenges patriarchal society. Patriarchy is a gender system that
is implicit in human animal relationships. An overlap of cultural
(15:33):
images of sexual violence against women and fragmentation and dismemberment
of nature and the body and Western culture exists. This
cycle of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption links Butchering with both
the representation and reality of sexual violence and Western cultures
that normalizes sexual consumption. Yeah. Actually with that, I was
(15:53):
when I was researching some of the things. One of
the articles that I saw, I saw had this whole
concept of masculinity and meet an animal protein to this
extreme idea like this that included that married women are
almost fearful of being vegetarians because of disapproval, rejection, or
even violence from men. Yeah, now that, now that you
(16:16):
say it, I have seen like kind of a joking, right,
you know for me, it used to be like you
don't smoke, do you? But I've seen it with some
of my well not really friends, but dudes in my life,
like you're not a vegetarian, are you right? Right? And
it is. He was like a disqualifier and it is
counted against you. And I could see that the extreme
level of any kind of violent relationship, this could be
(16:38):
one more excuse if you better have this as perfected.
This is perfection. Yeah, And I have been hurt and
to see because I have a lot of friends who
were like one of them is began and one of
them isn't or vegetarian, right, that's hard, hard relationship. I
definitely had moments where I when I was first really
into the dating world, and I was a vegetarian for
(17:03):
a lot of reasons. And I remember the first date,
the first thing that dude order was real was not
even asking me any like he knew I was a vegetarian.
We kind of already had this as a conversation and
he ordered that and I kind of looked at him.
I didn't have too much. I just kind of paused,
and he was, oh, you know, I just only ordered
things that I wouldn't cook for myself. And I kind
(17:23):
of just stared there and thinking, obviously, you have no
cares about my opinion because you got one of the
most politically incorrect meats and ordered it on the route. Yeah,
and just like enjoying meals together be difficult. My little brother,
in my view, very randomly became a vegetarian. But it's
(17:44):
because I don't see every often. But it happened over
Thanksgiving when I cooked the Thanksgiving and it was like, oh, hey,
I'm vegetarian. Oh no, no no, and just like um, yeah,
you forget all the things like yeah, well you have
to think about all the things that could be in there,
so stock or what's touched what I mean, that's really
(18:09):
important and and for those who are vegetarian or vegan,
you want to be respectful to that. And so you're like, crap,
what im I'm gonna do? Yes, um And going back
to the sexual politics of meat, a study did look
into the premise that all oppression is linked um here
specifically the oppression of animals and women, and it found
(18:30):
people who identified as more pro meat displayed a higher
correlation with sexist attitudes, and people with a more pro
animal stance correlated with a greater desire to shake male
female dichotomies like strict dichotomies. But the researchers were and
are quick to point out that um all the study
shows and is that these things are somehow related, and
(18:52):
that it doesn't show that everyone who eats meat as sexist,
because of course it's like the headline right right uh.
Adams's site is also full of examples of this whole
idea playing out during the Trump era if you want
to check it out, including a political pin called a
KFC Hillary Special two fat thighs, two small breast, left
(19:14):
wing and all kinds of ads actually do use terminology
like this. You can grab our buons, touch our breast,
things like that. Um. When Anne Alestio Parson published a
study finding a link between masculinity and me eating and
that in Argentina, male vegetarians were more likely to be
(19:35):
open to feminism, it's similarly got a very big response,
and when she was invited to speak on a talk
show on Fox, the male host bought out a steak
and ate it in front of her kind of proving
her points. Sheeez um. A recent study out of University
of Southampton found that for the three groups of male participants,
(19:58):
they all expressed a desire to eat less meat, but
that it was difficult without quote social permission, and this
study has gotten some criticism for its methodology, perhaps most
notably from author Baalen Lincoln, who cited the masculinity and
meat consumption trope and desire to make headlines. Another study
linked class and meat consumption, finding that when given the
(20:20):
option for either a beef or vegan beast burger, the
highest demand for meat came from people who rated themselves
at the lowest socio economically. And yet another study found
that men who felt that their masculinity was threatened routinely
added red meat to their meals. So there's a lot
of studies looking into this, UM. And I know recently
(20:44):
there's been that study about made headlines about veganism being
linked to white privilege. Whish I could see, right, And
that's that's true. That's we were talking about. You know,
me trying to be a vegetarian. It was really difficult.
That was one I was getting out of college, um
and changing and I needed to change my lifestyle anyway,
(21:05):
and this is a good way to go. And also
I had been reading some books and it was horrifying. Um.
But one of the things is because I could not
healthily do it. Part of that because I could not
afford all of the great ideas and in doing it
doing it healthy, because tofu was one of the things
that I could easily afford, but at the same time,
(21:26):
so much soy was causing a lot of disruption in
my body, you know, and stuff like that, as well
as the fact that I wasn't properly getting all the
greens that I needed and vegetables fresh vegetables are expensive
and it's absurdly so um and and because I'm with you,
I actually did read a column not too long ago
about how uh talking about being a vegetarian, talking about
(21:47):
being organic is a classic idea, and stopped stopped pushing
this as this is normal, this is healthy, this is
what we should be doing as a society. That's really nice,
that's a really great concept, but we understand us most
people cannot afford this. And it wasn't until the last
few years that even our system allowed for people to use, um,
(22:09):
the food assistance programs within this type of realm of
farmers markets and areas that you could get healthy options
that wasn't and and trying to stretch a dollar if
you can't afford it for a family of five, that's
almost impossible. Yeah, So yeah, I do have definitely seen
that I could see where they talk about but definitely
a classist idea for sure. Yeah. Another part of this
(22:33):
conversation is the idea that in our society we pressure
men uh to be more muscular, or that that's a
pretty big kind of pressure. Um. And to build muscle
you need protein, and we're told that you need animal
protein for that, which is not true. Um. Harvard's Men's
Health Watch found that quote red meat does contribute to
(22:55):
chronic disease and concluded it was reasonable to observe a
few meat three days a week. So there's a lot
going on here, right, yes, um, and we have even
more to discuss. But first we're going to pause for
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
(23:26):
we're back, Thank you sponsor. Alright, so let's talk about salads. Salad. Yes,
I haven't really excited to talk about salad. I'm really
hungry right now. There's all these tips and depths everywhere,
but no salad nor a steak. Look, I can't do everything.
That's true. You tried. I did try, Okay. So if
(23:46):
you type in women in Google's image church, one of
the first things you'll get, if not the very first thing,
is a woman Brunette White, laughing alone while eating a
salad having the time of her life. At It's like
she's she's having a wonderful time. And I enjoy my
fair share of salads. Oh. I've also definitely ordered or
(24:10):
made a sad salad to lose weight. I've done it,
and I cannot think of a time I was ever
that happy about salad. Wait, what's a sad salad? Oh?
Sad salad is like, you know, you got the water,
what's it called iceberg? Iceberg? And it's got to like
red around it and it's all walty. It's just got
(24:30):
no flavor. Is that it really? Yeah? Is it no dressing? Nothing?
What you do? You add carrots or a cucumber or
sometimes I add cucumber, maybe a celery. Way, it's always
delicious salad. Have you ever seen them? Me? Which one
(24:53):
a gift? Who was not in front of my salad? Go?
Look at us? Hilarious that we can a whole thing
like in front of my salad. And essentially I think
it was from a gay porn or something. I don't know,
because it beguns with When I looked at the whole thing,
I just saw that one was in front of my salad.
And then when you look at the whole thing. You're like, oh, hill,
oh there's more. There's way more to this. Co cool cool.
(25:15):
I remember um, back when Kristen and I we did
the video stuff, I'm never told you video series. I
didn't know anything about the Kardashians and I all I
know is mostly from her some from Bridget But I
didn't know that on their show they just eat salad
in silence. Sometimes there doesn't mean on that what I
(25:38):
don't know? They did do that? And then afterwards was
not in front of my salad or in front of
my salad? All right, well go look at that up,
will I will in front of my salad? Um, I
will say, there's a picture of me that exists where
I am like on a beach in my bathing suit
and I have salad and I look like I'm having
a wonderful time. So I'm close. I guess I love
(26:00):
a good salad. And they're they're stepping up their game. Yes,
restaurants are, Yes, they are. They absolutely are. Um And
like we just said at the top, yogurt is another
big thing. You'll probably see a picture of a woman
eating younger, yes, perfectly labeled spoonful of it. Yes, yes,
And I've been in a video lampooning match that is online.
(26:20):
You can find it many treasures, yes, so they all
are out there for your finding. If you google men
eating results, you'll get a lot of results around images
of a burger steak. Burger steak. There is a tumbler
devoted to women eating salads and laughing or are men
doing it to showcase how weird it is? And I
quite enjoy it. So from now all and every time
(26:40):
I eat a salad, I need to be laughing. Yes,
can't be crying my salad. Not Well, you can be,
but that's a different that's a different name. Yeah, you
can salad. It's one of the things. You're either the
sad woman or the happy the sad salad or the
happy salad. There's no in between. And salad is frequently
(27:01):
dismissed as rabbit food. Um, it's seen as a food
of deprivation. Therefore, it's coated as feminine since salads are
seen as a health food, and as we've already said,
healthy food is solidly in the four women category. Salads
are women right When the salad first became popular in
the earlier twentieth century, they were much fancier and perhaps
(27:24):
less healthy like jealous salad um than we think of
them today, but they were still feminine. It was a
way for affluent housewives to show off all about the presentation,
the chicken salad, potato salad, all of those salads. An
article on courts comes with the title women, we need
to throw off the sexist shackles of the salad, and
(27:46):
it goes into how most salads marketed as the main
course don't have enough nutrition out of proteins, on of fats.
They are a salad salad um or there's a pretty
sexist one I found on Cosmo for teen things guys
think about your salad. One of them is great the
data is already over. Ordering a salad is like ordering
(28:09):
water at the bar. That's not even a real meal,
that's a garnish for another meal. My grandmother used to
order salads. Did you just ask for no crew times?
You're going to eat half my food, aren't you? I
know you sneak cookies at night. Okay, whether I have
had a salad or not, or a giant meal, I'm
probably still but it's still going to sneak some cookies
(28:30):
at night. Yeah, I'm just gonna say that that should
be in every front. That doesn't matter what it is. Like,
I just had a giant hamburger and shake. Let's go
get some cookies. It may not be cookies and maybe donnuts.
We do have a twenty four hour don't a shop
near me? So yeah, I might have recently ordered from them. Yeah,
(28:52):
I actually never had do nuts from there. I thought
maybe they were front slut. Oh no, I thought you
were talking about happy No. No, sublime is delicity, they are.
You're right. Um. There's another article from the Cut, sub
send us some doughnuts, please, please, dont too bad. Another
(29:20):
article from the Cut, called life is Too Short for
Work Salad goes into how women eating in public is
like declaring you care more about taste than appearance, going
against a norm. Heaven forbid. It goes into how men,
for the most part, don't worry about what people will
think when they reach for a second cupcake or a
second glass of wine. Um man, I'm really bad at
(29:42):
this whole woman thing. Then that's not necessarily terrible. Especially
these aspects of women are also under intense pressure to
be skinny, which pushes them towards food like salads. But
of course, of course, studies have shown that women eat
a few or calories when they are with men as
opposed to being with women, and that when told an
(30:05):
option was healthier and that didn't you know, healthy foods
are associated with women, they largely stopped going for the
healthy option. So if they're told, oh, that is a
women do that, don't Oh no, I don't want to
do that, then okay, cool um. And this all ripples
out to restaurant menus. Salads are secondary, not enough for
(30:26):
a lot of restaurants. There are only a few salad
options and not a lot of thought went into those options.
And when you think about the fact that still most
chefs are mail well, a majority of them are male,
and most menus are designed by men. Also, in the USA,
people associate healthy with not as good tasting, which is
not true for every country I know. In France it
(30:47):
recently reversed. Um. But this is funny because just because
something is a salad doesn't make it healthy. It's that man,
those dressings, those addends. There is nothing more setting than
getting a sad salad and eating it halfheartedly and then
finding out later that it was more calories than the
thing that is really disappointing. It is so upsetting. Um.
(31:13):
And I was in a movie that was semi based
on my life. I need I need more details. Excuse me.
Somebody wrote a movie that's kind of based on my
life and I was in it and I was playing
me but not me. It was very confusing, right, Um.
And there's a joke in that movie about how my
character slashed me only eats kale salad for lunch, which
(31:36):
was true for a long time. And I was like,
oh man, you love some good kill. You've actually how
much you like kill? Kale is in my top five
favorite foods, which is really weird that I know this well. No,
it's not. I know you pretty well, pretty well, and
I'll tell anybody about my love kale. We had some kale.
You're like, oh my god, I love kale And I
was like, okay, love kale. I do? I do? And
I did eat kale salad every day for a long time. Um.
(31:59):
And it's socially aptable for women to eat south in public.
Really yeah, I always think about the fact that there's
always something left in my energy. Yes, it's the one
unsexy foods you could eat. I know. And it's funny
because that's like the date foods you think of because
um over on our other my other podcast Saver, we
just did an episode on lobster and that's also seen
(32:19):
as a date food, and like, these are very dangerous
on sexy foods to me, Like trying to do corn
on the cob is sexy? Gave my heart accomplishment? Why
what's that react? I don't want to delve into corn
on the cobb being sexy. Okay um, that's too much
(32:40):
you have um. But yeah, I do have a lot
of friends of experience that same concern. But at the
same time, it's like I'll just have a salad. I
won't get bloated or whatever it is. Really maybe because
I made too many greens, because that that makes me bloated.
I don't know, this is what I read. I've never
really put conscious thought all maybe recently have, mainly because
I to eat a lot of vegetables. But I've been
(33:02):
really giving my kimchi back into my my foods of everything,
and I'm like, man, there's a lot of sodium in itself.
It was like, well, that's different than a salade. But anyway,
okay um, I still for me, I don't like eating
in publican because I feel like eating is something that
(33:24):
I should not be doing. This is actually something we
were working on in therapy. Um, like, I'm not thin enough,
so salad is a way to be like, oh see,
I'm making effort. Um. It draws a little attention to
the fact that I'm eating as possible. I did the
same thing. I think if I'm eating fast food or something. Yeah,
I think people automatically assume, of course she's fast food
because I'm not, you know, very very skinny. So I
(33:47):
feel like everything's Also, we already know there is judgment
out there. When we talked about what's normal and all
of that, it's probably true for some people that they
are being judged, so therefore they have to do the
best to put on the show. Yeah, which again going
back here, I remember learning that the salad you get
at McDonald's are like just terrible for right, but it's
(34:09):
it's like a show. Um. That being said, I recently
have had some amazing salads and restaurants. Like you said,
I've had salads that were like the happiest of salads.
So I don't want the happiest of sal I do
love salad. I don't want to reign on salth parade.
It's just, um, don't be sad salad. You're good to
be happy salad. It's not sad salad. Okay, So I
(34:34):
think we've talked enough about salad for now. We do
have a little bit more for you, but first we
have one more quick break for word from our sponsor
(34:55):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor. So what are we
do about this whole gendered food unhealthy thing that we
have going on? Um? Eat more meat, just playing not that. Um.
The whole thing is often viewed as a massive exaggeration
(35:15):
of the hunter gatherer narrative, which is far more complex
than what we typically boil it down to. I could
go into it but then be here for hours and
no one wants that. Probably maybe like four people want it.
But I mean we could just split it up like
we do. Yeah, yeah, we could do that. Um, I
thought for another day. Researchers suggest that we reframe how
(35:38):
we view food that we look at it as genderless.
For instance, cooking isn't masculine or feminine, but it does
the skill necessary for being independent. Ask yourself why you
are making a food decision and if it's because of
beliefs around gender, to challenge those beliefs, drink more beer, Ladies,
drink more beer if you want to, if you want to,
(36:01):
and it's healthy. Public figures challenging this notion is something else.
Researchers posit helps the fact that Samuel L. Jackson, for instance,
is vegetarian, or the football player known as the three
hundred pound vegan. We have to come into it so
rude because he's a big football player. Okay, so three
hundred vegan. Yeah, And according to one article, we'll see
(36:23):
how this goes. The UK Advertising Standards Authority has put
in a new role which bands adverts which featured gender
stereotypes that can be considered harmful or sexist. I am
very interested to see, right, and now that happened this year,
in two thousand nineteen, so we'll see how that has
played out. There is just so much to unpack here,
(36:44):
and until we stop associating femininity with weakness, and everything
coded as feminine, including eating habits and foods, will be
seen as less than something to be avoided. I really
could just talk about this. Very excited about this one.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very hungry. Now I'm gonna
(37:05):
have to go find a meat salad somewhere. Combined them good.
We're just gonna do a gender neutral all the things
and then combine the both gender nutual salad. Please, we
would love to hear from you listeners. Um and in
the next episode, we're gonna be talking about the gendering
of drinks if anybody wants to preemptively right in about
(37:27):
Oh yeah, I'm ready for that one. Yeah. You can
email us at Stuff Media, mom Stuff at iHeart media
dot com. You can find us on Twitter at mom
Stuff Podcast and on Instagram at stuff I've Never Told You.
Thanks as always to our super producer Andrew Howard, and
thanks to you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You
the protection of I Heart Radios how Stuff works for
more podcasts from my heart Radio, It's the I Heart
(37:49):
Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Zero
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
I never told your production if I hear radios how
stuff work. Today we're talking about something I've been wanting
to talk about for a long time, ever and ever
(00:25):
and ever and ever and ever, and that is the
gendering of food. And this could be so many different
episodes because today we're mostly focusing on toxic masculinity and meat.
How daintilly you said that? Yeah, that's nice, that's how
we should say how we say okay um, But we're
not talking about Brogert Brogert, which is why the favorite
(00:48):
still just mind blowing every time you say it. I'm
like why, I didn't know what that was, and I
was like, what is happening and why? Well, that is
a fair question, but I don't have an answer to
broy awesome girt. That's how I can't. We can't buy
any like yogurt that is in a white like container
(01:09):
because a white obviously means girl, yeah or feminine, right,
it's too clean, So that the kind of those specific
products as a different episode. Right today, we're gonna be broader,
and this gendering of foods is pretty a pretty big
deal because it directly leads to health outcomes like increased
(01:31):
risk of heart disease, and when it comes to animal industry,
too much meat has negative impacts for our entire planet
when it comes to global warming and sustainability. So pretty big,
huge yep. It also relates back to something we've talked
about before, the gendering of American political parties. Republicans are
(01:52):
masculine meat eaters and Democrats are a feminine salad eaters
or vegetarians or vegans. Remember all the push back against
Michelle Obama's like Garden and her School unsinitiative? What is
she doing? Or against um a c coming for your burgers?
Are all the news around Corey Booker being a vegan
(02:18):
heaven forbid? And these are actual quotes from Fox News
about this a lot your freezers savior meat? Now, are
the Democrats really trying to take the White House on
a platform of banning meat? He wants to impose his
meat rationing on the rest of us. When you're eating
a steak and you go, no, no numb, that is
(02:39):
so delicious, What does Corey Booker counter that with? Can
you not do num num numb on any other foods? Not?
According to foxes only steak only stay, which seems kind
of impossible anyway, because you can't just gum it, which
is what nominum numb sounds like to me. Yeah, true,
(03:00):
too much, no, no, not enough For my own personal
brief journey with gendered eating. When I was younger, I
ate a lot, and I played outside a good bit,
but I ate a lot, and I was a chubby kid,
and me and my brothers used to compete at who
could eat the most. But then a family member told
(03:21):
me it wasn't lady like behavior. Like I said in
a recent episode, maybe you should shop in the maternity ward. Um.
They said, you don't want to get made fun of
because you're fat, right, So I became very concerned with
people thinking I was fat, and I didn't like being
seen eating in public, and I still have real issue
around it. Sometimes. Um, I didn't like to fill my
(03:41):
plate first in any situation. I would watch what other
people did and get less um. And when I did
eat in public, I tried to eat something like a
healthy salad because in my mind that was a feminine
food that women eat to stay thin. And I had
internalized all this misogyny, and then it like reversed when
(04:03):
I went to college, because I would order the biggest
burger steak when I was out with people because I
didn't want them to think I was like, oh the
other girls, that would be terrible. And all the while,
like when I was by myself, I was heating hardly
anything to stay thin, and all of that gender bs
um wasn't about what I wanted or what was best
(04:24):
for me. And in doing this research, I realized that
I've seen this play out my family in other ways.
My mom and I eat way more vegetables and white meat,
whereas the men and my family eat way more red
and processed meat and carbs. Right, I think I've seen
the same thing in my family, but in a different way,
in which because it was a family mill, no mill
(04:44):
was complete without some kind of hearty meat. Like for
myself and my mom, we could be happy with just
eating vegetables or a vegetable plate, I guess um, but
we couldn't just have that. No, I don't think it's
just my mom, but just in general that's fine with me.
But in my mind, because of the way I grew
up and my dad was the bread winner, meat winner,
(05:07):
whatever you wanna call it. We had to have some
type of meat, whether it's just a hamburger patty, like
just regular hamburger patty or something along those lines. And
I remember if my mom was gone, which was very
very very rare, and my dad was cooking, it was
always a piece of steak. All he had would be
a piece of steak. And that's not even the salad,
I want to say. It was like steak and then
(05:29):
whatever else like chips that he could find. That was
the one thing he could actually cook. Only he can
grill too, but very manly ways. Yeah, and that's interesting, um,
when we'll come back to that a bit later. But
the whole like grilling, is the masculine of cooking. That's
that's the meat, all right. So first of all, transitions, Um,
(05:52):
all over the world, men have a lower life expectancy
than women, and there are a lot of reasons for this,
but one of the big ones for a lot of
places is diet. In general, women have better eating habits
than men, and the reason for that could be totally
unhealthy for a decent check of women. And you have reminder,
eating disorders and obsession about your weight both are not healthy,
(06:15):
but in general, right, women have healthier eating habits. In
the US and a boatload of other countries, researchers have
found that we associate bold, spicy, flavorful foods with men,
and soft, sweet, and healthy foods with women. I have
found that there's a kind of similar thing with um
(06:37):
men being able to handle their spice and women not
so much. I've seen that play out. Um But okay, yeah, men,
this is all like stereotypical. But men eat burgers and fries.
Women eats out and fruit. Men eat pizza and beer,
women eat salad because all we eat a salad and
yogurt and wine yogurt throwing them It's true. Uh yeah,
(07:02):
these are generalizations, but generalizations we see play out a
whole of the time in our media, in our lives
that we might have internalized. I personally feel like I've
seen a million times in movies or TV shows when
a woman orders a burger around a bunch of dudes
and they're so impressed with her right look at her
that she eats cheeseburgers to sheats beef, and she's finn wat,
(07:26):
He's the perfect woman. And then you get like Nick
Offerman's bacon loving character on parks and rec being just
the ultimate manly man. Um. The Seinfeld episode where Jerry
orders just a salad on a date and both the
waiter and his date are horrified shows salad. The Homer
(07:47):
sipsen quote you don't win friends with salad, right. And
I know there's definitely a lot of sitcoms that says
the phrase man meat or like and they really mean steak,
not just and you win no sword, right, but literally like,
I'm gonna be a man, so as a man weekend,
we're having steaks and burgers and blah blah blah and
(08:08):
beer stuff like that. Nothing out of swords, right, nothing
outside of the two food groups meats and beer. I mean,
can I live that way too? I wish I wish
I could live with that way and not suffer very
bad consequences of death. Something that's related to this, though,
(08:28):
are commercials and burger commercials I find are are big offenders, um,
like way over sexualized women sexually eating burgers. Um. And
that commercial you know is not men for women, is
for men because real men eat burgers and all they
(08:50):
want to see is a girl on a car, half
naked eating a burger. Yes, correct, that's what I understand.
That's what these commercials are telling me. Um as marketed
to word men use over sexualized women to time meat
to sex all the time. One adrom Burger King had
a skimply clad model with a burger between her parted
lips and like she was lying on her stomach, so
(09:12):
it was profile and um. The caption red, It'll blow
your mind. Yeah, Taco bells men love Bacon campaign. Every
Carl's Junior ad that's ever been made, the Burger King
ad that featured X Men's mystique turning into a buff
dude after eating a burger with a tagline man up
(09:35):
of course, you know. And just the same with Carl's
Junior and Hardies because they were one and the same essentially,
uh and Arby's. They use that overtly aggressive voiceover. Have
you noticed that what everything's like? And it always you
have to eat this kind of that. Yeah, that was
my impression of that, because that's all I could think of,
was like, and then it's so whatever the sound effects
(09:56):
the burger slams down like it weighs two thousand tons,
like it's a Trucker's right, I'm always like, why it's
hardy it's hearty and delicious. And I'm like, but it's
just fried air foods, frid aired, you know, that's why
do they go fries. There's no real you know, delicious. Still, yeah,
what is it? What is Rvy's We have the meats say.
(10:21):
Another study found people are more likely to spring for
unhealthy food if it's wrapped in masculine packaging, and they're
more likely to spring for healthier food with feminine packaging. Okay,
And that same study found that the exact same blueberry muffins,
one presented in masculine packaging, the other in feminine packaging
(10:42):
with the word healthy on both of them. Respondents reported
the one with a masculine baggaging tasting better. Mm hmmm,
because I think they assume it must be unhealthier even
though it's healthy, right, I don't know. People people, people
but with stricter definitions or differentiations when it comes to
(11:03):
gender are more likely to reflect that and they're eating
habits and choices. And one study found that even bringing
up masculinity or femininity impacted people's food choices. When masculinity
was invoked, people chose the less healthy option. The opposite
was true for femininity. And I know we've all heard
about the studies showing that male vegetarians are seen as
(11:26):
less manly men are socialized to eat meat. One Twitter
poll directed at men found that when asked what was
keeping them from being van fort responded with social stigma
and thirty nine answered masculinity. And we see that in
the terms sway, boy, I've never heard that term fortunate,
(11:49):
never good cell. It brings us to the question why
do we see meat as this manly thing. A survey
cross several languages looking into whether respondents thought of food
word was more masculine or feminine. Overwhelmingly, meat products were
associated with men. Almost of people labeled the hamburger as masculine.
(12:14):
The same research found that meters were seen as more
masculine than non meat eaters. And yes, men do eat
more meat than women, and women make up a majority
of vegetarians and vegans. And there are a few things
that play here, some of which go way back um
dominance and power over another creature, eating your enemy. That
(12:35):
whole idea In French sociologist Pierre Bordeaux described men as
quote the natural meeters meet the nourishing food par excellence,
strong and strong, making giving bigger blood and health is
the dish for the men who take a second helping,
whereas women are satisfied with a small portion. Okay, A
(12:56):
study from pointed to chemical signature on thousand year old
bones to trace the rise of the patriarchy. Yep, because
ten thousand years ago, as agriculture was on the rise,
men and women ate the same stuff. Researchers know this
from bone analyzes. But when the Bronze Age rolled around,
women were primarily eating wheat and barley and men were
(13:19):
on a steady diet of animal products. At the same time,
women's bones were buried with less treasure, which researchers think
is another indicator in decreased status when compared to men.
In more recent history, before women were allowed to work
and meat could be um an expensive luxury for working
class families, it was common for the men of the
(13:40):
family to get the first and largest portion of meat,
since he needed the strength for working. How that sounds
like the same idea doing like thanksgiving, the man the
house is the one that cuts the meat. Yeah, that's
always been a weird thing to me. I didn't understand
why that was such a huge Uh. Patriarchal thing that
(14:02):
needed to be done in staid. Yeah, I didn't know.
In my family, that is not how it is. My
mom carves. There's no tradition for us when it's carved meat.
Let's just meat. I just always thought that was the
idea of It made me angry. In theory, it's like
one last thing for my mom to do. But on
(14:24):
the other hand, she did everything else, so I don't
see why. It's like the man gets to present the
honor of Yeah, like this thing that you put all
this work into, Yeah, I'll take it in. I don't
know about that. Carol J. Adams's book The Sexual Politics
of Meat a feminist vegetarian critical theory debut and got
(14:48):
quite a lot of media attention. The cover was illustrative
of one of the main points of the book. It
depicts the back of a naked woman sectioned out by
parts like we often see for meat, you know, like ribs,
chuck around, The point being both women and animals are
marketed and consumed from her site. The Sexual Politics of
(15:11):
Meat argues that male dominance and animals oppressions are linked
by the way that both women and animals function as
absent reference and meat eating and dairy production, and that
feminist theory logically contains a vegan critique, just as veganism
covertly challenges patriarchal society. Patriarchy is a gender system that
is implicit in human animal relationships. An overlap of cultural
(15:33):
images of sexual violence against women and fragmentation and dismemberment
of nature and the body and Western culture exists. This
cycle of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption links Butchering with both
the representation and reality of sexual violence and Western cultures
that normalizes sexual consumption. Yeah. Actually with that, I was
(15:53):
when I was researching some of the things. One of
the articles that I saw, I saw had this whole
concept of masculinity and meet an animal protein to this
extreme idea like this that included that married women are
almost fearful of being vegetarians because of disapproval, rejection, or
even violence from men. Yeah, now that, now that you
(16:16):
say it, I have seen like kind of a joking, right,
you know for me, it used to be like you
don't smoke, do you? But I've seen it with some
of my well not really friends, but dudes in my life,
like you're not a vegetarian, are you right? Right? And
it is. He was like a disqualifier and it is
counted against you. And I could see that the extreme
level of any kind of violent relationship, this could be
(16:38):
one more excuse if you better have this as perfected.
This is perfection. Yeah, And I have been hurt and
to see because I have a lot of friends who
were like one of them is began and one of
them isn't or vegetarian, right, that's hard, hard relationship. I
definitely had moments where I when I was first really
into the dating world, and I was a vegetarian for
(17:03):
a lot of reasons. And I remember the first date,
the first thing that dude order was real was not
even asking me any like he knew I was a vegetarian.
We kind of already had this as a conversation and
he ordered that and I kind of looked at him.
I didn't have too much. I just kind of paused,
and he was, oh, you know, I just only ordered
things that I wouldn't cook for myself. And I kind
(17:23):
of just stared there and thinking, obviously, you have no
cares about my opinion because you got one of the
most politically incorrect meats and ordered it on the route. Yeah,
and just like enjoying meals together be difficult. My little brother,
in my view, very randomly became a vegetarian. But it's
(17:44):
because I don't see every often. But it happened over
Thanksgiving when I cooked the Thanksgiving and it was like, oh, hey,
I'm vegetarian. Oh no, no no, and just like um, yeah,
you forget all the things like yeah, well you have
to think about all the things that could be in there,
so stock or what's touched what I mean, that's really
(18:09):
important and and for those who are vegetarian or vegan,
you want to be respectful to that. And so you're like, crap,
what im I'm gonna do? Yes, um And going back
to the sexual politics of meat, a study did look
into the premise that all oppression is linked um here
specifically the oppression of animals and women, and it found
(18:30):
people who identified as more pro meat displayed a higher
correlation with sexist attitudes, and people with a more pro
animal stance correlated with a greater desire to shake male
female dichotomies like strict dichotomies. But the researchers were and
are quick to point out that um all the study
shows and is that these things are somehow related, and
(18:52):
that it doesn't show that everyone who eats meat as sexist,
because of course it's like the headline right right uh.
Adams's site is also full of examples of this whole
idea playing out during the Trump era if you want
to check it out, including a political pin called a
KFC Hillary Special two fat thighs, two small breast, left
(19:14):
wing and all kinds of ads actually do use terminology
like this. You can grab our buons, touch our breast,
things like that. Um. When Anne Alestio Parson published a
study finding a link between masculinity and me eating and
that in Argentina, male vegetarians were more likely to be
(19:35):
open to feminism, it's similarly got a very big response,
and when she was invited to speak on a talk
show on Fox, the male host bought out a steak
and ate it in front of her kind of proving
her points. Sheeez um. A recent study out of University
of Southampton found that for the three groups of male participants,
(19:58):
they all expressed a desire to eat less meat, but
that it was difficult without quote social permission, and this
study has gotten some criticism for its methodology, perhaps most
notably from author Baalen Lincoln, who cited the masculinity and
meat consumption trope and desire to make headlines. Another study
linked class and meat consumption, finding that when given the
(20:20):
option for either a beef or vegan beast burger, the
highest demand for meat came from people who rated themselves
at the lowest socio economically. And yet another study found
that men who felt that their masculinity was threatened routinely
added red meat to their meals. So there's a lot
of studies looking into this, UM. And I know recently
(20:44):
there's been that study about made headlines about veganism being
linked to white privilege. Whish I could see, right, And
that's that's true. That's we were talking about. You know,
me trying to be a vegetarian. It was really difficult.
That was one I was getting out of college, um
and changing and I needed to change my lifestyle anyway,
(21:05):
and this is a good way to go. And also
I had been reading some books and it was horrifying. Um.
But one of the things is because I could not
healthily do it. Part of that because I could not
afford all of the great ideas and in doing it
doing it healthy, because tofu was one of the things
that I could easily afford, but at the same time,
(21:26):
so much soy was causing a lot of disruption in
my body, you know, and stuff like that, as well
as the fact that I wasn't properly getting all the
greens that I needed and vegetables fresh vegetables are expensive
and it's absurdly so um and and because I'm with you,
I actually did read a column not too long ago
about how uh talking about being a vegetarian, talking about
(21:47):
being organic is a classic idea, and stopped stopped pushing
this as this is normal, this is healthy, this is
what we should be doing as a society. That's really nice,
that's a really great concept, but we understand us most
people cannot afford this. And it wasn't until the last
few years that even our system allowed for people to use, um,
(22:09):
the food assistance programs within this type of realm of
farmers markets and areas that you could get healthy options
that wasn't and and trying to stretch a dollar if
you can't afford it for a family of five, that's
almost impossible. Yeah, So yeah, I do have definitely seen
that I could see where they talk about but definitely
a classist idea for sure. Yeah. Another part of this
(22:33):
conversation is the idea that in our society we pressure
men uh to be more muscular, or that that's a
pretty big kind of pressure. Um. And to build muscle
you need protein, and we're told that you need animal
protein for that, which is not true. Um. Harvard's Men's
Health Watch found that quote red meat does contribute to
(22:55):
chronic disease and concluded it was reasonable to observe a
few meat three days a week. So there's a lot
going on here, right, yes, um, and we have even
more to discuss. But first we're going to pause for
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
(23:26):
we're back, Thank you sponsor. Alright, so let's talk about salads. Salad. Yes,
I haven't really excited to talk about salad. I'm really
hungry right now. There's all these tips and depths everywhere,
but no salad nor a steak. Look, I can't do everything.
That's true. You tried. I did try, Okay. So if
(23:46):
you type in women in Google's image church, one of
the first things you'll get, if not the very first thing,
is a woman Brunette White, laughing alone while eating a
salad having the time of her life. At It's like
she's she's having a wonderful time. And I enjoy my
fair share of salads. Oh. I've also definitely ordered or
(24:10):
made a sad salad to lose weight. I've done it,
and I cannot think of a time I was ever
that happy about salad. Wait, what's a sad salad? Oh?
Sad salad is like, you know, you got the water,
what's it called iceberg? Iceberg? And it's got to like
red around it and it's all walty. It's just got
(24:30):
no flavor. Is that it really? Yeah? Is it no dressing? Nothing?
What you do? You add carrots or a cucumber or
sometimes I add cucumber, maybe a celery. Way, it's always
delicious salad. Have you ever seen them? Me? Which one
(24:53):
a gift? Who was not in front of my salad? Go?
Look at us? Hilarious that we can a whole thing
like in front of my salad. And essentially I think
it was from a gay porn or something. I don't know,
because it beguns with When I looked at the whole thing,
I just saw that one was in front of my salad.
And then when you look at the whole thing. You're like, oh, hill,
oh there's more. There's way more to this. Co cool cool.
(25:15):
I remember um, back when Kristen and I we did
the video stuff, I'm never told you video series. I
didn't know anything about the Kardashians and I all I
know is mostly from her some from Bridget But I
didn't know that on their show they just eat salad
in silence. Sometimes there doesn't mean on that what I
(25:38):
don't know? They did do that? And then afterwards was
not in front of my salad or in front of
my salad? All right, well go look at that up,
will I will in front of my salad? Um, I
will say, there's a picture of me that exists where
I am like on a beach in my bathing suit
and I have salad and I look like I'm having
a wonderful time. So I'm close. I guess I love
(26:00):
a good salad. And they're they're stepping up their game. Yes,
restaurants are, Yes, they are. They absolutely are. Um And
like we just said at the top, yogurt is another
big thing. You'll probably see a picture of a woman
eating younger, yes, perfectly labeled spoonful of it. Yes, yes,
And I've been in a video lampooning match that is online.
(26:20):
You can find it many treasures, yes, so they all
are out there for your finding. If you google men
eating results, you'll get a lot of results around images
of a burger steak. Burger steak. There is a tumbler
devoted to women eating salads and laughing or are men
doing it to showcase how weird it is? And I
quite enjoy it. So from now all and every time
(26:40):
I eat a salad, I need to be laughing. Yes,
can't be crying my salad. Not Well, you can be,
but that's a different that's a different name. Yeah, you
can salad. It's one of the things. You're either the
sad woman or the happy the sad salad or the
happy salad. There's no in between. And salad is frequently
(27:01):
dismissed as rabbit food. Um, it's seen as a food
of deprivation. Therefore, it's coated as feminine since salads are
seen as a health food, and as we've already said,
healthy food is solidly in the four women category. Salads
are women right When the salad first became popular in
the earlier twentieth century, they were much fancier and perhaps
(27:24):
less healthy like jealous salad um than we think of
them today, but they were still feminine. It was a
way for affluent housewives to show off all about the presentation,
the chicken salad, potato salad, all of those salads. An
article on courts comes with the title women, we need
to throw off the sexist shackles of the salad, and
(27:46):
it goes into how most salads marketed as the main
course don't have enough nutrition out of proteins, on of fats.
They are a salad salad um or there's a pretty
sexist one I found on Cosmo for teen things guys
think about your salad. One of them is great the
data is already over. Ordering a salad is like ordering
(28:09):
water at the bar. That's not even a real meal,
that's a garnish for another meal. My grandmother used to
order salads. Did you just ask for no crew times?
You're going to eat half my food, aren't you? I
know you sneak cookies at night. Okay, whether I have
had a salad or not, or a giant meal, I'm
probably still but it's still going to sneak some cookies
(28:30):
at night. Yeah, I'm just gonna say that that should
be in every front. That doesn't matter what it is. Like,
I just had a giant hamburger and shake. Let's go
get some cookies. It may not be cookies and maybe donnuts.
We do have a twenty four hour don't a shop
near me? So yeah, I might have recently ordered from them. Yeah,
(28:52):
I actually never had do nuts from there. I thought
maybe they were front slut. Oh no, I thought you
were talking about happy No. No, sublime is delicity, they are.
You're right. Um. There's another article from the Cut, sub
send us some doughnuts, please, please, dont too bad. Another
(29:20):
article from the Cut, called life is Too Short for
Work Salad goes into how women eating in public is
like declaring you care more about taste than appearance, going
against a norm. Heaven forbid. It goes into how men,
for the most part, don't worry about what people will
think when they reach for a second cupcake or a
second glass of wine. Um man, I'm really bad at
(29:42):
this whole woman thing. Then that's not necessarily terrible. Especially
these aspects of women are also under intense pressure to
be skinny, which pushes them towards food like salads. But
of course, of course, studies have shown that women eat
a few or calories when they are with men as
opposed to being with women, and that when told an
(30:05):
option was healthier and that didn't you know, healthy foods
are associated with women, they largely stopped going for the
healthy option. So if they're told, oh, that is a
women do that, don't Oh no, I don't want to
do that, then okay, cool um. And this all ripples
out to restaurant menus. Salads are secondary, not enough for
(30:26):
a lot of restaurants. There are only a few salad
options and not a lot of thought went into those options.
And when you think about the fact that still most
chefs are mail well, a majority of them are male,
and most menus are designed by men. Also, in the USA,
people associate healthy with not as good tasting, which is
not true for every country I know. In France it
(30:47):
recently reversed. Um. But this is funny because just because
something is a salad doesn't make it healthy. It's that man,
those dressings, those addends. There is nothing more setting than
getting a sad salad and eating it halfheartedly and then
finding out later that it was more calories than the
thing that is really disappointing. It is so upsetting. Um.
(31:13):
And I was in a movie that was semi based
on my life. I need I need more details. Excuse me.
Somebody wrote a movie that's kind of based on my
life and I was in it and I was playing
me but not me. It was very confusing, right, Um.
And there's a joke in that movie about how my
character slashed me only eats kale salad for lunch, which
(31:36):
was true for a long time. And I was like,
oh man, you love some good kill. You've actually how
much you like kill? Kale is in my top five
favorite foods, which is really weird that I know this well. No,
it's not. I know you pretty well, pretty well, and
I'll tell anybody about my love kale. We had some kale.
You're like, oh my god, I love kale And I
was like, okay, love kale. I do? I do? And
I did eat kale salad every day for a long time. Um.
(31:59):
And it's socially aptable for women to eat south in public.
Really yeah, I always think about the fact that there's
always something left in my energy. Yes, it's the one
unsexy foods you could eat. I know. And it's funny
because that's like the date foods you think of because
um over on our other my other podcast Saver, we
just did an episode on lobster and that's also seen
(32:19):
as a date food, and like, these are very dangerous
on sexy foods to me, Like trying to do corn
on the cob is sexy? Gave my heart accomplishment? Why
what's that react? I don't want to delve into corn
on the cobb being sexy. Okay um, that's too much
(32:40):
you have um. But yeah, I do have a lot
of friends of experience that same concern. But at the
same time, it's like I'll just have a salad. I
won't get bloated or whatever it is. Really maybe because
I made too many greens, because that that makes me bloated.
I don't know, this is what I read. I've never
really put conscious thought all maybe recently have, mainly because
I to eat a lot of vegetables. But I've been
(33:02):
really giving my kimchi back into my my foods of everything,
and I'm like, man, there's a lot of sodium in itself.
It was like, well, that's different than a salade. But anyway,
okay um, I still for me, I don't like eating
in publican because I feel like eating is something that
(33:24):
I should not be doing. This is actually something we
were working on in therapy. Um, like, I'm not thin enough,
so salad is a way to be like, oh see,
I'm making effort. Um. It draws a little attention to
the fact that I'm eating as possible. I did the
same thing. I think if I'm eating fast food or something. Yeah,
I think people automatically assume, of course she's fast food
because I'm not, you know, very very skinny. So I
(33:47):
feel like everything's Also, we already know there is judgment
out there. When we talked about what's normal and all
of that, it's probably true for some people that they
are being judged, so therefore they have to do the
best to put on the show. Yeah, which again going
back here, I remember learning that the salad you get
at McDonald's are like just terrible for right, but it's
(34:09):
it's like a show. Um. That being said, I recently
have had some amazing salads and restaurants. Like you said,
I've had salads that were like the happiest of salads.
So I don't want the happiest of sal I do
love salad. I don't want to reign on salth parade.
It's just, um, don't be sad salad. You're good to
be happy salad. It's not sad salad. Okay, So I
(34:34):
think we've talked enough about salad for now. We do
have a little bit more for you, but first we
have one more quick break for word from our sponsor
(34:55):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor. So what are we
do about this whole gendered food unhealthy thing that we
have going on? Um? Eat more meat, just playing not that. Um.
The whole thing is often viewed as a massive exaggeration
(35:15):
of the hunter gatherer narrative, which is far more complex
than what we typically boil it down to. I could
go into it but then be here for hours and
no one wants that. Probably maybe like four people want it.
But I mean we could just split it up like
we do. Yeah, yeah, we could do that. Um, I
thought for another day. Researchers suggest that we reframe how
(35:38):
we view food that we look at it as genderless.
For instance, cooking isn't masculine or feminine, but it does
the skill necessary for being independent. Ask yourself why you
are making a food decision and if it's because of
beliefs around gender, to challenge those beliefs, drink more beer, Ladies,
drink more beer if you want to, if you want to,
(36:01):
and it's healthy. Public figures challenging this notion is something else.
Researchers posit helps the fact that Samuel L. Jackson, for instance,
is vegetarian, or the football player known as the three
hundred pound vegan. We have to come into it so
rude because he's a big football player. Okay, so three
hundred vegan. Yeah, And according to one article, we'll see
(36:23):
how this goes. The UK Advertising Standards Authority has put
in a new role which bands adverts which featured gender
stereotypes that can be considered harmful or sexist. I am
very interested to see, right, and now that happened this year,
in two thousand nineteen, so we'll see how that has
played out. There is just so much to unpack here,
(36:44):
and until we stop associating femininity with weakness, and everything
coded as feminine, including eating habits and foods, will be
seen as less than something to be avoided. I really
could just talk about this. Very excited about this one.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very hungry. Now I'm gonna
(37:05):
have to go find a meat salad somewhere. Combined them good.
We're just gonna do a gender neutral all the things
and then combine the both gender nutual salad. Please, we
would love to hear from you listeners. Um and in
the next episode, we're gonna be talking about the gendering
of drinks if anybody wants to preemptively right in about
(37:27):
Oh yeah, I'm ready for that one. Yeah. You can
email us at Stuff Media, mom Stuff at iHeart media
dot com. You can find us on Twitter at mom
Stuff Podcast and on Instagram at stuff I've Never Told You.
Thanks as always to our super producer Andrew Howard, and
thanks to you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You
the protection of I Heart Radios how Stuff works for
more podcasts from my heart Radio, It's the I Heart
(37:49):
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