Have you ever asked yourself why “mogging” others seems so important in today’s digital day and age? Humans have evolved uniquely in terms of sexual selection competitiveness as a natural selection method, but in the past few years there has been a significant change in the criteria for modern beauty standards and expectations with the rise of digital media’s social influence. The increase in strictness of male beauty standards has called for a rise in the use of dietary supplements using a high waste output manufacturing process. Is it that the more we evolve to rely on sexual selection in a “male loneliness epidemic,” the more we pressure certain industries to manufacture with the sacrifice of our environmental impact?
The concept of maintaining a proper physical image’s importance has only grown since the start of the decade’s major shift to online spaces due to the global pandemic, and has yet to decline since young adults have acclimatized to finding interpersonal connections online. The physical standards people hold themselves to have shifted to be more monolithic than before, and has increased the amount of judgement one might receive on their figure thanks to the increasingly rigid rules. According to an article from Sports Medicine – Open, a study concluded that “image-centric social media use is positively associated with the use of dietary supplements and AAS among young male gym users” (Hilkens et al. 2021), which sensically explains the rise in use of collagen peptides, creatine, and magnesium glycinate as “looksmaxxing” became a trend. This association is displayed in the figure below:
However, this still begs the question: “why does physical beauty matter so much to humans in sexual selection?” Interestingly enough, it has to do with the competition aspect of sexual selection, which has been amplified by the “scarcity” set in social media’s “manosphere.” Due to human’s monogamous nature and male competition, men are actually very limited when it comes to “distributing [their] genetic benefits” (Puts 2016), so when the fear of not finding a partner is introduced, the standards men hold for themselves to ensure they are desirable to a mate reaches an extreme. Hence, the increase of dietary supplements’ supply and demand.
This presents an extreme issue; the manufacturing processes of peptide supplements have a large environmental factor. Due to the need for extensive coupling agents to form amide bonds, high amounts of waste in solvents, and toxic reagents (Isidro-Llobet et al. 2019), the process remains wasteful especially considering the scale of production coming from the new magnitude of demand. Traditional synthesis methods have poor mass efficiency and environmental footprint, averaging a process mass intensity (PMI) of around 13,000, while other processes like synthesizing small molecules have an average PMI of 300, and most pharmaceuticals have an average of 8,300 (Kekessie et al. 2024). Thankfully there has been a recent rise in research related to finding a more environmentally friendly process (Sharma 2026).
In conclusion, how humans have evolved to navigate sexual selection in monogamy, alongside the increase in intensity of beauty standards through digital media have resulted in the increase of dietary supplemental use and its subsequent ecological footprint. Only as the trend continues to grow rapidly, technology is struggling to keep up and find an applicable, greener alternative to the currently wasteful process of supplement manufacturing.
References
Hilkens, Luuk, Maarten Cruyff, Liesbeth Woertman, Jeroen Benjamins, and Catharine Evers. “Social Media, Body Image and Resistance Training: Creating the Perfect ‘Me’ with Dietary Supplements, Anabolic Steroids and Sarm’s.” Sports Medicine – Open 7, no. 1 (November 10, 2021): 7–81. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-021-00371-1.
Hojo, Keiko, Asaki Hara, Hiroyuki Kitai, Mare Onishi, Hideki Ichikawa, Yoshinobu Fukumori, and Koichi Kawasaki. “Development of a Method for Environmentally Friendly Chemical Peptide Synthesis in Water Using Water-Dispersible Amino Acid Nanoparticles.” Chemistry Central Journal 5, no. 1 (August 25, 2011): 5–49. https://doi.org/10.1186/1752-153x-5-49.
Isidro-Llobet, Albert, Martin N. Kenworthy, Subha Mukherjee, Michael E. Kopach, Katarzyna Wegner, Fabrice Gallou, Austin G. Smith, and Frank Roschangar. “Sustainability challenges in Peptide Synthesis and purification: From R&D to Production.” The Journal of Organic Chemistry 84, no. 8 (March 22, 2019): 4615–28. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.joc.8b03001.
Kekessie, Ivy, Katarzyna Wegner, Isamir Martinez, Michael E. Kopach, Timothy D. White, Janine K. Tom, Martin N. Kenworthy, et al. “Process Mass Intensity (PMI): A Holistic Analysis of Current Peptide Manufacturing Processes Informs Sustainability in Peptide Synthesis.” The Journal of Organic Chemistry 89, no. 7 (March 20, 2024): 4261–82. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.joc.3c01494.
Puts, David. “Human Sexual Selection.” Current Opinion in Psychology 7 (February 5, 2016): 28–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.07.011.
Sharma, Anamika, Ashish Kumar, L. Ravithej Singh, Priyanka Kushwaha, Beatriz G. de la Torre, and Fernando Albericio. “Embracing PMI: Advancing Sustainability in Peptide.” Organic Process Research & Development 30, no. 8 (July 20, 2026): 2346–59. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.oprd.6c00206.
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