Meatheads

Men eat more meat than women. Nature or nurture?

Have you noticed that men are meatheads? More precisely, have you noticed that men and women both tend to be meatheads, but that the average level of meatheadedness is higher in men than women?

I refer, of course, not to cognitive ability or oafishness, but to the propensity to eat meat. Most men and most women like meat, and eat it from time to time. Men, however, tend to eat more of it than women, even controlling for sex differences in overall caloric intake.

Where does the meat-munching gender gap come from? For a lot of people, the automatic assumption is that it comes from culture. One popular theory, for instance, explains the difference in terms of gender norms: Eating meat is seen as a masculine tendency, and therefore men do more of it. The norm comes first and then the behavior.

But like a lot of norm-based explanations, this one has always seemed back-to-front to me. Why assume that men eat more meat because eating meat is seen as masculine, rather than that eating meat is seen as masculine because men eat more meat? More generally, why assume that the sex difference comes from culture and culture alone?