News at 11! Apparently being manly and caring about animals and our earth aren’t mutually exclusive? Another stupid, yet fun and ultimately vaguely illuminating media trend from the word factory that created “hippiester” and “metrosexual.”

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Excerpt:

What is a hegan, you might ask? They are, Pierce claims, “the new face of veganism”: “Men in their 40s and 50s embracing a restrictive lifestyle to look better, rectify a gluttonous past, or cheat death. They are hegans. They are healthy. And they are here to stay.” Hegans aren’t interested in the principles of veganism, or saving their environment, or wearing extravagantly colored vegan tunics — they’re just interested in living longer. (Men quoted in the piece tout veganism’s supposed ability to prevent cancer, diabetes and heart disease.)

And no, these are not the effete, flouncing vegans of yore — they are cops, and firefighters, and, most manly of all, men who skate on ponds. Case in point: Joe McCain, a mid-40s Somerville police detective whose weight problems — he once loved pizza, steak and fried foods — led him to “cut meat, dairy, eggs, chicken and fish from his diet and [add] power vinyasa yoga, which helped him shed 60 pounds in eight months.” Or what Pierce calls “the ultimate hegan,” Rip Esselstyn, a veteran Texas firefighter who convinced his department to shun animal protein — and turned his idea into a diet book called “The Engine 2 Diet.”