Many men have a complicated relationship with meat, from misconceptions about healthy quantities to fraught perceptions of masculinity, which makes them leery of a vegetarian diet.

It’s widely known that men in the United States are attached to eating meat, but did you know they eat an incredible 57 percent more meat than women do?

This statistic comes from a U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which compared average intakes of protein foods to the recommended intake amounts for each gender and age group. The average intake of meat, poultry, and eggs was highest for teenage boys and adult men, far exceeding recommended amounts, whereas females of all age groups remained within the recommended amounts.

Men’s relationship with meat is complex for a number of reasons. As Civil Eats reports, many men tend to view meatless meals as incomplete and believe that humans are designed to eat a lot of meat: