‘A Man Must Eat Meat’

In the Texas race for U.S. Senate, Republicans keep coming back to the same insult: that James Talarico, the Democratic candidate, does not eat meat. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has referred to his opponent as “Tofu Talarico.” Donald Trump has repeatedly called Talarico a vegan—sometimes pronouncing it “vay-gan,” and sometimes embellishing it with the assertion that Talarico does eat meat, but that afterward, he “throws up all over the place.” At one October rally, the president said of Talarico, “In Texas he talks about, I’m a vegan, I’m a vegan,” and then helpfully explained, “vegan meaning he likes lettuce.”

For the record, Talarico is not a vegan. He has denied being one repeatedly, and as a visual rebuttal, his campaign posted a picture of him chomping on a turkey leg. His critics may be basing their attacks on some statements Talarico made during his 2022 campaign for reelection to the Texas House of Representatives. In one speech, he said that reducing meat consumption is the “moral thing to do,” and that his campaign had become a “nonmeat campaign” that was buying only “vegan products from our local vegan businesses.” But he has said his current campaign “basically runs on barbecue,” and unless he means tempeh burgers, this means it is not vegan. Nevertheless, Senator Ted Cruz played a clip of the 2022 speech on a recent podcast episode and cited it as evidence that Talarico wants to “destroy oil and gas and destroy cattle ranching.” The conservative commentator Sean Hannity said on his podcast last month that Talarico is running a “vegan campaign.”

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The plant-based criticisms seem to be less about Talarico’s diet and more an attempt to undermine his masculinity. Manliness is still a trait that many American voters look for in their male leaders, and a beefy corpus of psychological literature reveals that people subconsciously associate meat-eating with masculinity. And although this bias exists almost everywhere, it’s particularly prevalent in Texas, the nation’s biggest cattle-producing state, where brisket is such a way of life that Texas Monthly magazine has a “barbecue editor.”

Studies conducted across more than a dozen countries, and with excellent titles such as “Eating Meat Makes You Sexy,” have found that people consider meat eaters to be more masculine than vegetarians, and especially more so than vegans. These studies have concluded that eating meat makes men “feel like real men”; that women prefer omnivorous men and rate them as more attractive; and that men who want to be seen as more masculine are less likely to consider giving up meat. “There is a metaphoric relationship between mammal muscle meat and maleness” is how one such study vividly put it. In the United States, women are more likely to be vegetarian or vegan than men are. Even female vegans think male vegans are more feminine than meat-eating men, which shows how “deeply rooted in our consciousness” these stereotypes are, Dominika Adamczyk, a psychologist at the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences who has conducted several studies on meat-eating and perceptions of masculinity in Poland, told me.

Veganism might seem female-coded because it connotes empathy and a concern about animal welfare, which may be positive qualities in general but are not exactly Texas tough. Vegan men seem to violate the stereotype that men should be strong, ruthless killers. The accusations that Talarico is a vegan invoke “this idea that compassion, particularly with animals, is kind of incompatible with masculinity,” Rob Velzeboer, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia who has co-authored a review of the meat-masculinity studies, told me. Veganism seems more socially acceptable when men pursue it for health reasons rather than animal-welfare reasons, Velzeboer added.

Politicians seem to be well aware of what their diet implies about their manliness. Men running for office from both parties have long made sure to ostentatiously eat meat on camera. George H. W. Bush liked to order a rare T-bone steak while campaigning. In 2003, John Kerry chowed on a cheesesteak in Philly (though, controversially, with Swiss cheese rather than Cheez Whiz) a few weeks before he announced he was running for president. And practically all Oval Office hopefuls stop by the Iowa State Fair to gnaw on a pork chop. Meanwhile, the mere suggestion of salad can lead to an entire news cycle: After Barack Obama remarked on the high price of arugula in 2007, during his campaign for president, a spokesperson for his Republican rival John McCain derided him as an “arugula-eating, pointy-headed-professor type.”

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Like Obama before him, Talarico may overcome this attack. But the stereotype that a good, strong leader eats meat will likely stick around. On some lizard-brain level, many people appreciate a man who seems like he can slay a bison and drag its carcass back to the cave for dinner. Reading the psychological literature, I was shocked by just how many people around the world have an innate association between animal protein and machismo.

But perhaps I shouldn’t have been: Many years ago, I visited Russia, my birthplace and another culture that insists on manly meat-eating. One day my husband, Rich, and I sat down with my Russian cousin at a mostly vegetarian St. Petersburg restaurant for lunch. Scanning the menu, my cousin grew more and more uneasy. “I don’t know if this place will have the right food for Richard,” she said. “A man must eat meat.”