"men" news and stories

To discover what long term effects regular alcohol consumption has on the average make life span, Dutch researchers tracked over 1,300 men (all born between 1900 and 1920) for four decades (1960-2000, or until death) and periodically surveyed them about eating, drinking and smoking habits, weight and medical problems. After compiling all their data, the researchers found that there was a correlation between drinking small amounts of wine and a longer life expectancy in these men. Those who drank about 1/2 glass per day had lower mortality rates than their spirit- and beer-drinking buddies. The average increase in life expectancy was 2 years. The wine-drinkers even lived an average of 3.8 years longer than those who abstained from alcohol completely.

This study did not examine the properties of wine to come up with concrete reasons for the increase in life expectancy, but it is the first study to confirm that the effects previously noted in animal experiments translate to people.

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In the US, Valentine's Day celebrations are generally geared towards couples, with a slight bias towards women when it comes to the marketing of chocolates, flowers and other gifts - a bias that is meant to have women encourage men to buy gifts for them. In Japan, things are a little different. The chocolates and other Valentine's Day items are marketed towards women, but they're marketed for them to buy and give to men, rather than the other way around. Barentain Dei calls for gifts to be given to boyfriends and husbands, as well as for giri-choco, or obligation chocolates, to be given to male bosses, coworkers, classmates and friends. About 80% of Japanese women participate in the tradition, spending an average of $20 on their most chocolate important purchase and $6 on each of their other chocolate gifts, averaging $56 per woman for a total of over $400 million countrywide on the holiday. This doesn't include additional gifts or fancy dinners.

If this all seems a bit unfair, as it is more one-sided than the US version of Valentine's, not to worry. On March 14th, the Japanese celebrate "White Day" as in reciprocation for Valentine's Day, where men buy gifts, from chocolates to expensive jewelry, as a sign of affection

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A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in conjunction with the University of California, Davis, has uncovered a difference in the way that the eating habits of men and women are impacted by body image.

When shown images of "ideal-bodied people" of their own gender, young men and women often changed their eating habits depending on how they perceived their own body in relation to the image shown. If they were insecure about their bodies, some women would eat less after seeing the image, while some men would eat more. The food used in the study was pretzels, which the participants were given free access to during another activity.

The body images that the women saw were taken from magazines like Cosmo, Vogue, Shape and Elle. The men's images came from fitness magazines, including Men's Health, Men's Fitness and Muscle & Fitness. The participants were all of average build.

The question that remains is what effect viewing these images has in the long run and whether it contributes to the development of eating disorders.

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I don't normally get my food news from men's mags, but it's not that often that they include chefs amidst the models, either.

Cat Cora is one of the Food Network's Iron Chefs, a latecomer to that show after its first season started to add a bit of gender equality. A talented chef from the South, the 39-year-old specializes in Greek and Mediterranean foods, though she's not above throwing some old fashioned soul food into the mix. She's also not above doing a little grocery shopping at the convenience store, where she picked up some ingredients for FHM's Mini Mart Iron Chef article

With only a few ingredients, she whipped up Jerky Tartar, Ham and Cheese Roulade and Napoleon Krispy Kremes. As much fun as it would be to see Krispy Kremes as the secret ingredient on Iron Chef, none of these recipes would have gotten her a win, so don't expect to be too inspired by the food in the piece and just check it out if you want to check out Cat.

[via The Food Section]

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Two British researchers have published a study suggesting that hunger may relate to how men perceive different female body types, BBC News reports. The researchers surveyed 61 male college students coming and going from a university dining hall, first asking them how hungry they were and then asking them to rate a series of photographs of similarly dressed women of varying weights and body types. The half of the group that said they were hungry rated heavier women as more attractive, according to the abstract of the study, which appears in the British Journal of Psychology. The researchers now plan on reversing the study to see how hunger affects female perception of male body types.