That Brat Will Make You Fat. Drat

Just as we head into the start of another football tailgating season comes unpleasant — but not really surprising — news from Europe: Eating meat is associated with weight gain, and especially when it comes to eating the kind of meat we associate with the coldcuts layout or barbecue grill. The Imperial College London studied 400,000 adults from ten European countries over five years and found that in both men and women, eating meat went hand in hand with weight increase.

Even controlling for skewing factors such as physical activity and total daily calorie intake, people whose diets included more meat than others put on more pounds than others; specifically, those who consumed an extra nine ounces of meat a day wound up packing on an extra five pounds of weight after five years. The meat-weight link was strongest in the case of processed meats, your sausages and hotdogs and pastrami and ham.

Along with being unhappy news for tailgaters and deli lovers, this is a bit of a downer for proponents and marketers of high-protein diets, implying as it does that there are diet-friendly proteins and diet-defeating proteins. On the other hand, a pound a year is hardly dramatic and could probably be offset just by consuming one less soft drink or doughnut or side of fries for each meat dish eaten.

Tailgaters, of course, could probably offset the caloric effect of a fistful of bratwursts if they simply limited themselves to one beer on game day. Unfortunately, from the point of view of most tailgaters that would probably defeat the whole purpose of the event. Some would rather give up watching the game.

Tomorrow: As bad as parking lot fare might be, when you get inside the stadium the food just gets scarier.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 and is filed under Diet and food industry, Obesity causes, Obesity research and studies. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Permalink.