It comes down to whether you can make a living in India if you get into sports. The economics around it are strong enough to force out anyone considering sports. Cricket is the only sport in India that can get you top dollar whether you make it big or small. The compensation provided to a person playing hockey or table-tennis is meager in comparison.
Those that are talented and have the will + passion for the sport shine as long as they have enough funds. Then there are those [1] that have to sell their bow to make ends meet despite securing a silver medal at the south asian championships. It was heart breaking reading that.
They pointed out Korea tend to do well in per capita medal counts as Taekwondo is a popular sport there - and there are gold, silver and two bronze medals in four weight categories for two genders - a total of 32 medals available. On the other hand cricket, one of the most popular sports in India, has zero olympic medals.
That can only be a small part of the story. If you look at the current medal count, South Korea has 16 while India has just 2. But none of those 16 Korean medals are from taekwondo. There are 3 judo medals, but that is technically a Japanese sport, not Korean.
There are some things in this article that are true and some false. And as an Indian I can tell you that are many things that people don't understand.
India is huge country. Huge, I mean so huge that it will be difficult to truly explain the diversity we have here. It will be easy for a German to explain what Germany is, Or French to explain what France is and so on. But it will be very difficult for an Indian to explain what India is in totality basically because there are thousands of cultures, ways of lives, languages, people of ethnic origin, color, language, religion and so on and so forth. In fact any form of classification that you can come up to we have diverse categories in that.
This is not true for China. Or Korea or Thailand. Because they are a single ethnic group. People who talk of deficiencies or things not being a part of Indian culture do not understand Indian culture.
In India you will see large metropolitan cities acting as hubs for employment, living and opportunities. Go to villages you see poverty you also see prosperity(Depending on where you go). You will see most advanced technologies to old stone age agriculture methods. At one end you will see farmers in the area of Punjab being the richest of the lot and you will also see farmers committing suicide due to debt and poverty.
You will see people eating stomach full to people barely affording a meal a day.
Amidst all this we have a thriving industry in every domain of business you can imagine. We have the best colleges and universities and we also have a huge problem of illiteracy.
We write software, we have a nuclear weapons program, despite being the worlds most peaceful nation we have one of the largest armies in the world. We have a space program. Yet at the same time we struggle to feed our self.
Our society still has the stains of socialism and communism from the old days. We still have massive corruption and inefficiency in government layers.
Amidst all this parents feels their kids are better off studying and getting good jobs to make a living than doing something like sports which don't offer much incentive to make a comfortable living. There are instances of gold medal winners pawn broking their medals to afford a day's meal.
Also there are not many facilities and training options if you want to be a serious athlete. At the same time we don't believe China kind of policies either.
While you provided an accurate description of the Indian culture, your comment does not address the issue at hand.
The biggest problem according to me lies in the Indian culture; We don't challenge authority enough to pursue our dreams.
In Indian culture most decisions that matter are made for children by their parents. Disobeying your parents has an associated stigma to it. While this being a good thing for holding the families together, and arguably increasing happiness, this can be a deterrent to developing a person's individuality and self confidence.
So while it is difficult for well wishing parents to suggest a high-risk, high-reward path for their children (it's not their dream after all), which involves the child following a sport which he/she is good at, the children's subservience hamper independent thinking required to pursue their dream on their own. IMHO this is the primary cause of the herd mentality that we see so very often in India.
This herd mentality causes a catch22, where prior successes are required in a sport for parent-approved children's participation, and due to lack of participation there aren't any successes.
Of course there are miracles, but unfortunately not very often. For example, I attribute a lot of the participation in cricket and as a result the top class Indian cricket team that we see today, to the miracle named 'Sachin Tendulkar'[1] - one of the best batsmen that the sports has ever seen.
But with the modernization(westernization?) of the Indian culture, things are looking better. Looking at India's history at the Olympics[2], recently we have started seeing successes across a variety of sports - shooting, boxing, and badminton. I hope this trend continues and helps convince more parents to let their children pursue their dreams and not be just another rat in the rat race. And also convince a lot more children that challenging the authority can sometimes be a good thing.
Erm, care to point out a few of the things in the article that are false? I could find none.
The article does not try to explain what India is, but why India doesn't win as many medals in the Olympics as are expected from a nation this big. And it's does a pretty decent job of that IMO.
> Amidst all this parents feels their kids are better off studying and getting good jobs to make a living than doing something like sports which don't offer much incentive to make a comfortable living.
Seems reasonable to me (but I went, studied, and got a good job instead of going to sports).
No real interest in sports unless it is cricket. There are pockets where there is a significant secondary interest in soccer (WB, Kerala come to mind) and hockey but other than that it is cricket, cricket, cricket.
Where money is allocated to sports the bureaucrats insert themselves into the pipeline. There was a story[1] where an olympic bound athlete [flag bearer] wanted to pay for his physio guy to come along. Of the 142 member team there are 61 non athletes. You would hope that 50 or so of them would be for the needs of the athletes (like physio, etc). Somehow I doubt that...
So the article has the right tone... very little infrastructure and no strategic effort in improving it.
When I lived in India, I certainly observed that no one there seemed to care about athletics. It's just not in the culture.
I'd regularly go jogging. People would stop and stare - doubly so if I stopped running and did pushups. In my entire time there, I saw perhaps 3-4 Indians running, and considerably more foreigners. The Pune running club was comprised primarily of people who spent time overseas and expats.
During a conversation with an auto driver, he told me that Indian's don't do "poses" (i.e., yoga) - "that stuff is just for tourists". (I gather there is some regional variation.)
So my guess that the reason India doesn't have a lot of medals is that people just don't care to compete for them.
IMHO, with a billion people, I believe that BOTH a) your generalization is true, i.e., the majority is disinterested AND b) not relevant w.r.t. Olympic medal-winning potential : it is enough for a small minority to be interested in sport / fitness & glory to make the cut for the olympics. I believe that the 80/20 rule applies, and is actually more of a 95/5 rule in most societies and most achievements : 5% of the population account for the glory (, the rest just wake the flag and feel proud, conveniently forgetting that one cannot be proud of what one did not achieve personally).
I suspect you might find a similar proportion of everday Chinese equally disinterested in "poses" (not sure, just speculation).
I believe that the core reason is our usual friend, corruption and red tape. It's not just sports; in general, the meritocratic lose out because wherever there is an opportunity in India, whatever be the form of opportunity. That includes what is rightfully yours, such as welfare handouts, your passport, etc; An Indian's everyday life consists of jumping through hoops to get basic things done.
I was working with many Indians a few years ago and they asked themselves the same question. One had an interesting take I've not heard elsewhere - he claimed that the large number of vegetarians in India results in poorer athletic potential - the lack of meat and protein leading to less strength, quickness, etc.
It was an interesting idea, but looking up some facts myself right now, that claim could be tested by Pakistan's medal count. Same general genetic background, same general infrastructure problems, but are not generally vegetarians. However, Pakistan hasn't won a medal in 20 years, and only a few medals ever.
Kenyans and Ethiopians tend to get even lower levels of protein in their diets and their Olympic athletes are pretty damned quick. As running sub 3 minute kilometers back to back for a whole marathon.
Their macro-nutrient is generally about 10%-15% fat, 10% protein and 75%-80% carbs, and mostly from plant sources.
Provides per capita tracking of medals won. Currently New Zealand is in first place with 3 golds and 4 bronzes. India has 1 silver and 1 bronze putting them in 45th place.
Better, but per capita computation punishes larger countries because, in many sports, the number of competitors a country can send is independent of population.
For example, if China were to split in four, the four parts would almost certainly win more medals in table tennis than China does now.
Similarly, 'US West' would play 'US East' in the basketball final, but the USA will get at most one medal.
Corruption and regional politics are major factors too. Suffice it to say sports is not very meritocratic in India. A person has to be exceptionally talented to jump through all the hoops. Quoting from http://www.indianexpress.com/news/corruption-in-sports-leads...Sunita Godara, a former marathon runner and Arjuna Award winner, said, “We decided to join Anna Hazare as we have been fighting against corruption at various levels in the sports bodies for the past 20 years. There is favouritism in the selection process and corruption at every level.”
This seems like a great opportunity for America - send some scouts to India to find poor young children that show athletic talent, tell their parents (or adopt them if they're orphans) that they can be American citizens if they let them go to America for athletic training. Give them American citizenship by the time they turn 16 (the age required for Olympic participation), and we'll be able to easily raise our Olympic medal count. It's a win-win situation - the US increases its medal count and the children get a vastly better life than their parents.
This seems like a good idea but there are a couple of issues though:
1. I believe from anecdotal evidence most young children start serious preparation so that by their teens, they would have to have a significant portion of their technique mastered so that talent can start playing a significant role. However, I am not sure how easy it is identify the kids pre-teenage.
2. Investment costs: Importing a group of people just for the sole purpose of racking up medals (non withstanding the inherent creepiness of it) will be tremendously expensive. How do you justify the expense if the children don't want to do it eventually?
While the article is true, it misses the point that the games and sports that India does excel in, do not feature in the Olympics. Cricket, kabadi, kho kho, chess etc.
I am really surprised that GB did not make an effort to have T20 Cricket in Olympics, as that format is much more amenable to Olympics and arguably, more popular with today's spectators.
Another point that is missed is the Indian diet. A large portion of the population is vegetarian ( and not all kinds of meat are eaten ). And Indians are foodies that like to eat spicy, oily food etc.
> Another point that is missed is the Indian diet. A large portion of the population is vegetarian ( and not all kinds of meat are eaten ).
Could you clarify further what proportion of the population is vegetarian? Surely, there are high protein vegetarian diets (say something concentrated in Whey) that athletes could do?
> And Indians are foodies that like to eat spicy, oily food etc.
Not sure how this is relevant. Assuming that there is a inherent cultural bias towards spicy food, it is not that difficult for a competitive athlete to go on a stricter regime while working towards victory.
I would attribute this to the following:
1. As a society, and culturally India historically has not given sufficient importance to physical fitness. So while historically there was great importance given to spiritual and philosophical pursuits(they had universities setup more then thousand years back dedicated to philosophy - Nalanda), the physical/bodily aspect was not only overlooked but considered almost an overhead/obstacle to ultimate goal in life. Even Yoga's birth(in India) was related more to spiritual pursuit. Not surprising to see origins of Chess in India(even though Chess is a sport, but it is mental). And India does reasonably good in Chess even now.
2. Even the food habits, historically, in India are geared more towards supporting this bent towards mental/spiritual aspects than physical. Hence prevalence of vegetrianism. Now vegetarianism can be one of the healthiest lifestyle(there has been known triathletes who are pure vegetarians)...but that requires a well balanced diet - which is not the case for majority in India(for most in India, vegetarian diet has lot of grease and less nutrition).
3. There is a reason why Cricket is the most popular sport in
India - it does not require great physical fitness yet you can play it for hours. And cricket does grab a lion share of sporting opportunities in India (and most lucrative).
3. Prevalent thinking still is that sports is waste of time, and you are better of spending that time on studies...hence you will see abundance of Indian American spelling bee champs even here in US, yet you will not see many in athletics
4. Combine that with lack of creativity and focus from Government in India in identifying(and persisting) with a sport which can fetch medals (like Turkey etc)
Every Olympic medal winner is an expert at his/her sport. Given that attaining expertise requires about 10 years of "deliberate practice" under the supervision of a capable coach, the deficiencies in India's sports management come under focus:
1. The lack of native coaches is evident from the need to depend on foreign coaches. This leads to obvious challenges for an aspiring sportsperson. For instance, many potential sports persons may just not be talent-spotted.
2. The incentives to pursue a career in sports are weak: The middle classes - who can think of funding their child's sports ambition - usually give in to the fear of being excluded from a "regular" career, usually based on education qualification.
Brazil and Mexico suffer from the same problem, they are middle income countries with more than a 100 million people and yet they are not much better than Kenya, and although not a country with much people Israelis are richer than the majority of the world they do not go well in the Olympics either, so money just do not buy a good Olympics performance like the article tried to sell.
One thing that can explain is culture, Australia has a culture for competition, for example Australian lifeguards compete in the Surf Life Saving competition in aquatic sports, it's not a coincidence that Australia goes well in aquatic sports in the Olympics, Swimming, Rowing and Sailing are responsible for half their gold medals.
India is a big country with a huge population. As with many other complex phenomena, there is no one reason which can explain why India is not doing well in sports. My guess is that the country is just going through a trough. Wait for a few more generations and see.
In general, as economic forces level the playing field for most countries around the world, the medals tally will start correlating well with the population.
"Sport was never a priority for a majority of [Indian] parents and their kids," this line says it all. India doesn't have a culture that encourages sports. In a typical middle class family, the parents are actively involved in education of their kids but when it comes to sports they will draw some ground rules like 4 to 6 pm for playing, then studies and no play time during exams and that's about it.
India is an impoverished nation. More than 55% of people are severely malnourished. To top it, the militant brahmanic Hindutva of North India advocates vegetarianism - which equates to further lack of proteins. And the caste system that looks down upon manual labor and subsequent sedentary lifestyle for last 3000 years have made Indians a weak race. To top it corruption and lack of self drive.
What India can do is persuade IOC to include cricket as an event (but still with counterparts such as Australia, South Africa & Sri Lanka their chances could be thin).
Guns are not banned in India. It just takes more effort to get guns. You need a license to own a firearm. One of the high courts declared that unless there is something adverse against the candidate one cannot be denied license. This effectively makes it a right to own a firearm.
Form a special branch of military service for athletes, form a special federal police squad for the best marksmen, issue special exemptions at the discretion of the president, or train overseas. All those methods have been used.
Most countries with strict gun control nonetheless have a way you can get access to rifles for sport-shooting at licensed facilities. One of the two Indian shooting-sport medallists is also in the army.
Despite the in-vogue arguments that come with sparse evidence to support that a vegetarian diet can indeed match the athletic predisposition and performance of a non-vegetarian one, I find it highly suspect that regions of the world ( including India ) which have had to rely exclusively on plant protein for hundreds of generations would yield the same athleticism predisposition rates as regions that haven't had such a constraint.
Consistently high preponderance in vegetarianism (in India) has to share some of the blame for a lack luster interest in athleticism and athletic activities.
There is simply no other very large land mass that has a cultural history of very high (and almost exclusive) dependence on plant protein.
This does not even begin to tell the tale of the deleterious effects of a diet entirely devoid of testosterone-laden red meat.
[+] [-] cinbun8|13 years ago|reply
Those that are talented and have the will + passion for the sport shine as long as they have enough funds. Then there are those [1] that have to sell their bow to make ends meet despite securing a silver medal at the south asian championships. It was heart breaking reading that.
[1] - http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/article3278...
[+] [-] ebr4him|13 years ago|reply
I'm an Indian.
[+] [-] michaelt|13 years ago|reply
They pointed out Korea tend to do well in per capita medal counts as Taekwondo is a popular sport there - and there are gold, silver and two bronze medals in four weight categories for two genders - a total of 32 medals available. On the other hand cricket, one of the most popular sports in India, has zero olympic medals.
[+] [-] w1ntermute|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacques_chester|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamaal|13 years ago|reply
India is huge country. Huge, I mean so huge that it will be difficult to truly explain the diversity we have here. It will be easy for a German to explain what Germany is, Or French to explain what France is and so on. But it will be very difficult for an Indian to explain what India is in totality basically because there are thousands of cultures, ways of lives, languages, people of ethnic origin, color, language, religion and so on and so forth. In fact any form of classification that you can come up to we have diverse categories in that.
This is not true for China. Or Korea or Thailand. Because they are a single ethnic group. People who talk of deficiencies or things not being a part of Indian culture do not understand Indian culture.
In India you will see large metropolitan cities acting as hubs for employment, living and opportunities. Go to villages you see poverty you also see prosperity(Depending on where you go). You will see most advanced technologies to old stone age agriculture methods. At one end you will see farmers in the area of Punjab being the richest of the lot and you will also see farmers committing suicide due to debt and poverty.
You will see people eating stomach full to people barely affording a meal a day.
Amidst all this we have a thriving industry in every domain of business you can imagine. We have the best colleges and universities and we also have a huge problem of illiteracy.
We write software, we have a nuclear weapons program, despite being the worlds most peaceful nation we have one of the largest armies in the world. We have a space program. Yet at the same time we struggle to feed our self.
Our society still has the stains of socialism and communism from the old days. We still have massive corruption and inefficiency in government layers.
Amidst all this parents feels their kids are better off studying and getting good jobs to make a living than doing something like sports which don't offer much incentive to make a comfortable living. There are instances of gold medal winners pawn broking their medals to afford a day's meal.
Also there are not many facilities and training options if you want to be a serious athlete. At the same time we don't believe China kind of policies either.
[+] [-] sharmajai|13 years ago|reply
The biggest problem according to me lies in the Indian culture; We don't challenge authority enough to pursue our dreams.
In Indian culture most decisions that matter are made for children by their parents. Disobeying your parents has an associated stigma to it. While this being a good thing for holding the families together, and arguably increasing happiness, this can be a deterrent to developing a person's individuality and self confidence.
So while it is difficult for well wishing parents to suggest a high-risk, high-reward path for their children (it's not their dream after all), which involves the child following a sport which he/she is good at, the children's subservience hamper independent thinking required to pursue their dream on their own. IMHO this is the primary cause of the herd mentality that we see so very often in India.
This herd mentality causes a catch22, where prior successes are required in a sport for parent-approved children's participation, and due to lack of participation there aren't any successes.
Of course there are miracles, but unfortunately not very often. For example, I attribute a lot of the participation in cricket and as a result the top class Indian cricket team that we see today, to the miracle named 'Sachin Tendulkar'[1] - one of the best batsmen that the sports has ever seen.
But with the modernization(westernization?) of the Indian culture, things are looking better. Looking at India's history at the Olympics[2], recently we have started seeing successes across a variety of sports - shooting, boxing, and badminton. I hope this trend continues and helps convince more parents to let their children pursue their dreams and not be just another rat in the rat race. And also convince a lot more children that challenging the authority can sometimes be a good thing.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachin_Tendulkar
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_at_the_Olympics
[+] [-] elssar|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpiasetz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pnathan|13 years ago|reply
Seems reasonable to me (but I went, studied, and got a good job instead of going to sports).
[+] [-] clwen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spitx|13 years ago|reply
Well true for the most part.
China's largest ethnic group being Han which outstrips the far fewer Zhuang, Manchu & Uyghur etc (order of billion to order of million).
[+] [-] deskamess|13 years ago|reply
Where money is allocated to sports the bureaucrats insert themselves into the pipeline. There was a story[1] where an olympic bound athlete [flag bearer] wanted to pay for his physio guy to come along. Of the 142 member team there are 61 non athletes. You would hope that 50 or so of them would be for the needs of the athletes (like physio, etc). Somehow I doubt that...
So the article has the right tone... very little infrastructure and no strategic effort in improving it.
[1]http://dawn.com/2012/07/20/indias-top-wrestler-upset-over-la...
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|13 years ago|reply
I'd regularly go jogging. People would stop and stare - doubly so if I stopped running and did pushups. In my entire time there, I saw perhaps 3-4 Indians running, and considerably more foreigners. The Pune running club was comprised primarily of people who spent time overseas and expats.
During a conversation with an auto driver, he told me that Indian's don't do "poses" (i.e., yoga) - "that stuff is just for tourists". (I gather there is some regional variation.)
So my guess that the reason India doesn't have a lot of medals is that people just don't care to compete for them.
[+] [-] _debug_|13 years ago|reply
I suspect you might find a similar proportion of everday Chinese equally disinterested in "poses" (not sure, just speculation).
I believe that the core reason is our usual friend, corruption and red tape. It's not just sports; in general, the meritocratic lose out because wherever there is an opportunity in India, whatever be the form of opportunity. That includes what is rightfully yours, such as welfare handouts, your passport, etc; An Indian's everyday life consists of jumping through hoops to get basic things done.
Disclaimer : am Indian.
[+] [-] bluedevil2k|13 years ago|reply
It was an interesting idea, but looking up some facts myself right now, that claim could be tested by Pakistan's medal count. Same general genetic background, same general infrastructure problems, but are not generally vegetarians. However, Pakistan hasn't won a medal in 20 years, and only a few medals ever.
[+] [-] xiaoma|13 years ago|reply
Their macro-nutrient is generally about 10%-15% fat, 10% protein and 75%-80% carbs, and mostly from plant sources.
http://www.active.com/running/Articles/Eating_practices_of_t...
[+] [-] nimrody|13 years ago|reply
Quoting wikipedia:
"During the period in which he won all six of his Hawaiian triathlons Dave Scott followed a strict vegetarian (vegan) diet."
[+] [-] mseebach|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parfe|13 years ago|reply
Provides per capita tracking of medals won. Currently New Zealand is in first place with 3 golds and 4 bronzes. India has 1 silver and 1 bronze putting them in 45th place.
[+] [-] Someone|13 years ago|reply
For example, if China were to split in four, the four parts would almost certainly win more medals in table tennis than China does now.
Similarly, 'US West' would play 'US East' in the basketball final, but the USA will get at most one medal.
[+] [-] jezclaremurugan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w1ntermute|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eshvk|13 years ago|reply
1. I believe from anecdotal evidence most young children start serious preparation so that by their teens, they would have to have a significant portion of their technique mastered so that talent can start playing a significant role. However, I am not sure how easy it is identify the kids pre-teenage.
2. Investment costs: Importing a group of people just for the sole purpose of racking up medals (non withstanding the inherent creepiness of it) will be tremendously expensive. How do you justify the expense if the children don't want to do it eventually?
[+] [-] manojlds|13 years ago|reply
I am really surprised that GB did not make an effort to have T20 Cricket in Olympics, as that format is much more amenable to Olympics and arguably, more popular with today's spectators.
Another point that is missed is the Indian diet. A large portion of the population is vegetarian ( and not all kinds of meat are eaten ). And Indians are foodies that like to eat spicy, oily food etc.
[+] [-] eshvk|13 years ago|reply
Could you clarify further what proportion of the population is vegetarian? Surely, there are high protein vegetarian diets (say something concentrated in Whey) that athletes could do?
> And Indians are foodies that like to eat spicy, oily food etc.
Not sure how this is relevant. Assuming that there is a inherent cultural bias towards spicy food, it is not that difficult for a competitive athlete to go on a stricter regime while working towards victory.
[+] [-] sunjain|13 years ago|reply
2. Even the food habits, historically, in India are geared more towards supporting this bent towards mental/spiritual aspects than physical. Hence prevalence of vegetrianism. Now vegetarianism can be one of the healthiest lifestyle(there has been known triathletes who are pure vegetarians)...but that requires a well balanced diet - which is not the case for majority in India(for most in India, vegetarian diet has lot of grease and less nutrition).
3. There is a reason why Cricket is the most popular sport in India - it does not require great physical fitness yet you can play it for hours. And cricket does grab a lion share of sporting opportunities in India (and most lucrative).
3. Prevalent thinking still is that sports is waste of time, and you are better of spending that time on studies...hence you will see abundance of Indian American spelling bee champs even here in US, yet you will not see many in athletics
4. Combine that with lack of creativity and focus from Government in India in identifying(and persisting) with a sport which can fetch medals (like Turkey etc)
[+] [-] dsushant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hazov|13 years ago|reply
One thing that can explain is culture, Australia has a culture for competition, for example Australian lifeguards compete in the Surf Life Saving competition in aquatic sports, it's not a coincidence that Australia goes well in aquatic sports in the Olympics, Swimming, Rowing and Sailing are responsible for half their gold medals.
[+] [-] tathagata|13 years ago|reply
In general, as economic forces level the playing field for most countries around the world, the medals tally will start correlating well with the population.
[+] [-] mailarchis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anuraj|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laktek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsr_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flurie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] five18pm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WildUtah|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _delirium|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spitx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spitx|13 years ago|reply
Consistently high preponderance in vegetarianism (in India) has to share some of the blame for a lack luster interest in athleticism and athletic activities.
There is simply no other very large land mass that has a cultural history of very high (and almost exclusive) dependence on plant protein.
This does not even begin to tell the tale of the deleterious effects of a diet entirely devoid of testosterone-laden red meat.