(Newser) – If you're like us at this time of year, you're craving some warm spring days, some barbecue, and some beer. Well, now a team of European chemists has discovered that those last two things are even better together than you thought. Normally meat grilled at high temperatures produces a lot of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and reproductive problems in lab animals, Fox News explains. But marinating meat in beer can greatly mitigate that effect, the researchers found.

Researchers grabbed some pork loin and tried marinating it in a pilsner, a non-alcoholic pilsner, and black ale. Their control loin, cooked unmarinated, wound up having PAH levels well above the European Food Safety Authority's guidelines, but the ones soaked in beer for four hours first came out below, Pacific Standard reports. Black ale performed the best, dropping the count 53%—researchers theorize that ales work better because of their "higher antioxidant capacity." The non-alcoholic pilsner actually outperformed the standard pils, dropping the content 25% to the pilsner's 13%. (More good news for beer lovers: It may also be a scientifically sound post-workout recovery beverage.)

