Could Your Diet Affect Your Dating Life?

Could Your Diet Affect Your Dating Life?

A new study shows what men and women look for on a potential partner's plate

You already know that eating habits could make or break a date—let's be honest, no one likes a sloppy eater—but it turns out that your diet might play a role in attracting a date, too, according to new research from the dating app AYI (Are You Interested?). 

They analyzed the online activity of 180,000 app users, looking at 2.4 million interactions overall (950,000 interactions by women and 1.45 million interactions by men). Whenever a user viewed someone's profile, AYI looked at the likelihood of that user reaching out to connect.

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In a shocking twist on the classic "love a girl with a burger" trope, researchers found that men were 11 percent more likely to reach out to vegetarian women than women who liked to eat meat. It was nearly the opposite for women, who were 13 percent more likely to reach out to meat-eating men than vegetarian men. AYI didn't collect any info on the percentage of vegetarian men and women overall, however, so we can't say for sure whether this was just a classic case of loads of veggie-eating guys going for veggie-eating girls, and vice-versa for meat eaters. 

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Obviously, you don't need to ditch your meaty appetite to land a date—that's just crazy. Still, it's interesting to know that people even consider diet criteria when looking for The One. AYI's VP of Product and Data Insights, Josh Fischer, says that even though people on the app may use diet, height, income, or other factors to determine whether or not to contact a potential date, they usually forget all about those criteria if the person reaches out to them first. Why? Probably because knowing someone is interested becomes more important than small factors like eating habits, says Fischer. So be open-minded; your soul mate could be a rib-gnawing, BBQ-obsessed beef-lover or a green-eating, almond-chomping vegetarian for all you know. 

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