Tri-tips go straight to your hips?

Note: I was going to headline this post with some sort of thinly-veiled masturbation reference juggling the words Eat, Meat, and Beat, but I've been doing a lot of that lately (the headlines, not the masturbation), so I decided to take the high ground today.

Anyway, hey low-carb people! Bad news! A new study out of Europe shows that the more meat you eat, the more weight you gain. From the BBC:

The findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, also support public health messages advocating cutting down on the amount of meat we eat, the researchers said.

Participants from 10 European countries, including the UK, were weighed and measured at the start and then asked to report their weight five years later.

Overall, the researchers found that meat consumption was associated with weight gain in both men and women.

More detailed analyses showed that the link was still significant after taking into account overall calorie intake, physical activity and other factors which may have skewed the results.

The team calculated that in people who ate the same number of calories, an extra 250g of meat a day - equal to a small steak - led to an additional weight gain of 2kg (5lbs) over five years.

I know what you're thinking. "Those Eurotrash scientists are trying to ruin the United States! First they attack genetically modified crops and now this! It's our right as Americans to eat all the beef and mutant corn we can shove down our gullets!"

While I concur on the GMO front - it is, after all, a proud American tradition to leap off cliffs like lemmings at the whim of manipulative, evil corporations - I'm baffled by the whole need-to-eat-meat thing. Up until the 1950s, humans just didn't eat that much meat, with the exception of medieval royalty, and they all had gout. Even if you follow the Paleo model, the cavemen didn't eat much meat simply because it was hard to catch and they didn't have adequate refrigeration (at least not on purpose), so they mostly eat fruits, roots, and nuts.

The Euro-scientists can't really explain the weight gain, except for a theory that meat messes with appetite suppression, which doesn't make sense in the context of this study. Everyone was eating the same amount of calories. My personal theory is that people who eat less meat tend to be healthier, so they exercise more, so they have higher metabolisms. Maybe in the short term, a low-carb diet might induce ketosis and help you lose weight, but in the long run, a balanced diet will always win. So take my advice, the less you touch the beef, the better off you'll be.

That was a thinly-veiled masturbation reference, wasn't it? Damnit, I almost made it!