Being Vegetarian Doesn't Make You Better in Bed

The idea makes for one steamy ad campaign, but vegetarians don’t necessarily have better sex, Nina Shen Rastogi writes for Slate. PETA’s claim that meat makes people “fat, sick, and boring in bed” is a little misleading—the research is based on people who ate low-fat, low-cholesterol diets. Vegetarians do tend to be slimmer, but it’s likely they’re just more health-conscious overall.

There’s even evidence that passing on meat can lower your libido. “Vegetarian diets tend to correlate with higher rates of zinc deficiency, which is closely associated with lower testosterone levels and depressed sex drives,” Rastogi writes. And there’s a historical link between meat and sex. Veggie Leo Tolstoy wrote that eating meat “only serves to develop animal feelings, to excite desire, to promote fornication and drunkenness.” (More vegetarianism stories.)