Cooking meat with beer may protect you from cancer

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are substances that can form when meats are cooked at very high temperatures, like on a backyard grill.

High levels of PAHs, which are also in cigarette smoke and car exhaust, are associated with cancers in laboratory animals, although it is uncertain if that is true for people.

Beer, wine or tea marinades can reduce the levels of some potential carcinogens in cooked meat, but little was known about how different beer marinades affect PAH levels, until now.

The researchers, from the University of Vigo in Spain and University of Porto in Portugal, grilled samples of pork marinated for four hours in Pilsner beer, non-alcoholic Pilsner beer or a black beer ale, to well-done on a charcoal grill.

Black beer had the strongest effect, reducing the levels of eight major PAHs by more than half compared with unmarinated pork. “Thus, the intake of beer marinated meat can be a suitable mitigation strategy,” researchers said.

The study appears in American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Curated For You

IndiGo Flight Cancellations LIVE Updates: IndiGo cancels over 300 flights from Delhi, Mumbai & B’luru; pilots’ body blames airlines for ‘manufactured’ crisis

CAT 2025 Answer Key LIVE Updates: Response sheet to release ‘shortly this evening’ at iimcat.ac.in

‘Armed struggle has failed in India… We urge all to come out’: Ex-Maoist ideological head in first interview