Study finds: Marinating your steak in black beer before grilling reduc

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Liam_snorkel

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Marinating your steak in black beer before grilling reduces the associated cancer risk by half.

GRILLING meat gives it great flavour. This taste, though, comes at a price, since the process creates molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which damage DNA and thus increase the eater’s chances of developing colon cancer. For those who think barbecues one of summer’s great delights, that is a shame. But a group of researchers led by Isabel Ferreira of the University of Porto, in Portugal, think they have found a way around the problem. When barbecuing meat, they suggest, you should add beer.

This welcome advice was the result of some serious experiments, as Dr Ferreira explains in a paper in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The PAHs created by grilling form from molecules called free radicals which, in turn, form from fat and protein in the intense heat of this type of cooking. One way of stopping PAH-formation, then, might be to apply chemicals called antioxidants that mop up free radicals. And beer is rich in these, in the shape of melanoidins, which form when barley is roasted. So Dr Ferreira and her colleagues prepared some beer marinades, bought some steaks and headed for the griddle.

One of their marinades was based on Pilsner, a pale lager. A second was based on a black beer (type unstated). Since black beers have more melanoidins than light beers—as the name suggests, they give it colour—Dr Ferreira’s hypothesis was that steaks steeped in the black-beer marinade would form fewer PAHs than those steeped in the light-beer marinade, which would, in turn, form fewer than control steaks left unmarinated.

And so it proved. When cooked, unmarinated steaks had an average of 21 nanograms (billionths of a gram) of PAHs per gram of grilled meat. Those marinated in Pilsner averaged 18 nanograms. Those marinated in black beer averaged only 10 nanograms. Tasty and healthy too, then. Just what the doctor ordered.

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21600085-reduce-health-risk-barbecuing-meat-just-add-beer-marriage-made
 
I will try this tonight and report back tomorrow on whether I feel even less cancerous.
 
I too will be preparing my food in this manner, for greater health.
 
You can drink the beer in addition to smothering all of your foodstuffs in it and also bathing in it.

I mean, I don't bathe in beer.

Not regularly anyway :ph34r:
 
I didnt follow the link, but marinade for how long? I remember the wanker-chefs arguing about length of time a cut should marinate. Some said overnight, others said 15 mins is all that is needed. And you know what? I cant remember which was proved right!
 
I pasted the entire article, and it didn't specify. Try both in the name of science!
 
Spiesy said:
Newsflash:

Everything causes cancer.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Blindness and hairy palms maybe, but you sure about that?
 
Instead of marinading, have brined lamb in unhopped brown ale and stout wort previously.

60g salt per litre of liquid overnight was yummy and saved me from cancer it seems. Heart disease likely now though.
 
Old news.

I have mariated steaks and whole rumps in black beers before.

And, I haven't got cancer at the moment . - that I know about.

Therefore it must be fact.

Thanks Liam, I always knew I was doing the right thing.


Smokomark
 
Who would have thought beer and BBQ go together. The wonders of modern science.
 
Wonder if this is the same Uni that found 60% of people who died last year had eaten carrots within the 7 days prior of death. Stats are awesome.
 
Isn't all science just stats?

In this case the results were based on the average number of nanograms of PAHs per gram of grilled meat
 
QldKev said:
Isn't all science just stats?

In this case the results were based on the average number of nanograms of PAHs per gram of grilled meat
I'd imagine if the results are not statistically significant, then they are insignificant.
 

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