Does eating meat lead to weight gain?

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: meat, weight gain, health news

(NaturalNews) According to a recent study out of Europe, eating lots of meat may be contributing to weight gain. Even among people eating roughly the same amount of overall calories, those that eat meat are more likely to weigh more than those who do not.

Over 400,000 Europeans from ten different countries participated in the study, which was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Participants filled out diet and lifestyle questionnaires and were weighed both at the start of the study, and at five years later. Overall, meat consumption was found to be linked to weight gain in both men and women.

The worst meat offender for weight gain was processed meat, which may be due to the nitrites, nitrates and other chemical preservatives they contain.

The team did admit, however, that participants self-reported their weights in the end, rather than be weighed in a clinical setting. And there could have been other variables responsible as well for the overall weight difference between the two groups.

But researchers still believe there is a link between meat consumption and overall weight gain, especially after discovering that, among people consuming the same exact number of calories, an extra eight or nine ounces of meat consumed every day accounts for a five-pound gain in weight over five years.

"In primates, animal food consumption is inversely related to body weight," explain Michael T. Murray, N.D., and Josephy E. Pizzorno, N.D., in their book Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, Revised Second Edition. They believe eating meat affects human weight in a similar way to how it affects primates.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10726414

http://www.naturalpedia.com/H/Human-Meat.htm...