McGill University Study Says Meat Calms Men Down

(Nov. 10) -- Having a rough day? If you're a man, maybe you just need to take a deep breath and look at some meat.

Men standing around barbecues and poking at patties have long suspected that cooked meat has a calming effect, but now the phenomenon has been confirmed by a new study from McGill University in Canada.

Researchers told 82 male subjects they were studying multitasking. The subjects were asked to sort through stacks of pictures while simultaneously following an actor reading a script. When the actor screwed up a line, the subjects inflicted varying degrees of punishment on the actor, in the form of loud noises. The highest-volume sounds were believed by the subjects to be painful to the actors.

The study found that the subjects were less likely to choose to inflict pain if they were looking at a photo of cooked meat when the mistake was made.

The researchers were surprised. They had expected that the sight of meat would make men more aggressive. Just imagine what happens when you try to take some from a dog.

Instead, they found the opposite to be true. The researchers suspect this may be because meat is associated with relaxing times with friends and families. And while meat acquisition may be a historically stressful activity, by the time it's cooked, everyone is ready to take a load off.

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"It wouldn't be advantageous to be aggressive anymore, because you would've already used your aggression to acquire the meat, and furthermore, you'd be surrounded by people who share ... your DNA," lead researcher Frank Kachanoff told the Montreal Gazette. "One of the basic principles in evolution is to want to preserve not only your DNA but also that of your next of kin."

The benefits of meat go on. Some anthropologists believe that adding animal protein into our diets made us smarter and played a major role in shaping humanity as we know it today.

Kachanoff wants to continue the study by incorporating images of pre-steak dead animals and uncooked meat, as well as incorporating women as both subjects and targets of aggression.

Read more at the Montreal Gazette.

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