It’s well known that a healthy diet can have many potential benefits, ranging from reducing the risk of illness to improving how we feel. But did you know that men, especially those in their 40s and upwards, are especially poor at engaging with health and nutrition messages? I don’t think that men care less, more that they have relied on the women in their lives to take charge of it for them. I suspect that this might be especially relevant to the Jewish community, known for strong matriarchal families.
Perhaps that’s why most of the messaging about what we eat is directed towards women, which is no surprise when you consider that women make 80% of the health decisions for their families. Women are also twice as likely to attend regular medical check-ups and take prescribed medication as directed. When it comes to nutrition women eat more fruits and vegetables, eat less red meat and take less salt than men. There are plenty more statistics to be found, all suggesting that women are more aware and proactive in managing their health through nutrition.
I have been practising as a nutrition therapist for 20 years now, and men make up less than 10% of my clients. In addition, when a man does come for a consultation it is most often at the behest of the women in their lives, sometimes even being accompanied by an exasperated wife or girlfriend.
I often detect an air of machismo when working with men, even though you’d think that kind of attitude belonged in the last century. But it seems not. When I was conducting research for my new book, I came across a fascinating study suggesting that sexism is alive and well in the world of nutrition. In 20111, researchers at the University of Huddersfield created two diets, one with burger and chips for lunch, pizza and beer for dinner, the other pasta salad and fruit for lunch, with rice, vegetables and a glass of wine in the evening. They asked 200 people about their perceived masculinity and femininity of the diets, and the vast majority chose the first diet as significantly more masculine, and judged men who ate the second as more feminine. The participants were not older people, they were students. Could it be that gender stereotyping is not limited to the older generation, as one might expect, but persists and affects all ages?
But why does this matter? Firstly, there are health issues that affect men more than women, such as cardiovascular disease, lung and colon cancer. There are also prostate issues, something you would think that men might know about, but a survey conducted by Prostate Cancer UK as recently as 2016 found that 17% of men knew nothing at all about their prostate gland whilst a staggering 92% of men who had heard about of it had no clue what it did. Yet prostate enlargement and inflammation affects around 1/3 of men over 50, and nutrition in the form of flavonoids, plant chemicals found in a variety of familiar foods such as apples, quinoa and sesame seeds may help reduce inflammation. Furthermore, there is a potential link between raised cholesterol, weight and even protein, calcium and excess dairy and the incidence of prostate cancer, the third most common form of cancer in the UK. There are established nutritional approaches to encourage prostate health yet how many men know about them?
Nutrition can also play a role in managing stress, improving energy levels and cognitive function, yet men are less likely to engage with nutrition, often waiting until a situation presents itself.
What can be done? My best advice is to cajole and encourage the men in your families to take better care of themselves, to be more involved and not to bury their heads in the sand. It’s highly likely that this task will fall to women, which feels rather unfair and sexist in itself, but the message is that men can do a lot better, they just have to be told to do so.
Man Food by Ian Marber is published today by Piatkus
