Beer Found to be as Healthy as Wine 517
Matt Clare writes "Researchers at the University of Western Ontario (Canada) recently found that beer has the same positive qualities that wine has previously been found to have. The media release quotes professor John Trevithick, 'We were very surprised one drink of beer or stout contributed an equal amount of antioxidant benefit as wine, especially since red wine contains about 20 times the amount of polyphenols as beer.' For more info on how beer helps police harmful free radicals in blood, The London Free Press also has an article."
Interesting.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet... (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Rationalization to drink! (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, drinking is moderation is good, too much of anything may be harmful. At least that has been my experience. All this article does in reinforce little but of knowledge.
Jonathan
Re:Cheers! (Score:5, Insightful)
And like God, beer can be healthy if you don't over do it.
Re:Please define it (Score:3, Insightful)
now go out and get some chimay.
Re:Interesting.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think cost is the issue in the beer/wine debate. It's a lifestyle difference. Wine drinkers will have a glass with dinner. Beer drinkers chug a six pack watching the game on Saturday.
Re:Better question: (Score:3, Insightful)
Contradictory as always (Score:2, Insightful)
Just the other day I heard a cardiologist arguing that, at least in terms of positive cardiac health, the level where wine becomes more harmful than good was at least two-thirds of a bottle. That's my kind of moderation!!
Reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think I speak for all of us ... (Score:3, Insightful)
It only mentions "positive" qualities.
Less is like more, only better (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a physiologist, or even very smart, so the rest of this is pure guesswork:
Probably small amounts of alcohol don't do bad things to you, and may even clean crud from the blood and arteries. Larger amounts make the kidneys work harder, and the excess is eventually converted to fat.
Since most people (in the population that eats enough to read Slashdot) have enough fat already, these negative health effects of alcohol take over with increased consumption.
The formula for health may be formed like:
health = q +
where q is the daily consumption.
It's obviously more complex than that, but as I said, I'm not a medic. The point to my guess is that the effect is not linear, but it's also not exponentially bad for you to drink more. 10 beers/day is not much worse for you than, say, 5. The curve levels off.
Erm, well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, I brew for a living.
Beer vs. "low carb" nuts (Score:3, Insightful)
Beer still has to battle against the more extreme low-carb advocates out there. One book, the popular South Beach Diet, goes to such an effort to discredit beer that it fallaciously compares consuming beer to consuming 100% pure maltose, simply because beer contains some maltose. The claims in the book made me think the author has some sort of agenda against beer or alcohol that go far beyond low-carb eating.
Interesting, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the people who buy $8 beer are likely to just drink a glass with dinner, as a replacement for wine. I believe a good beer can be just as good an accompaniment as wine. Just depends on the food, or your mood.
A truly relevant Simpsons quote: (Score:1, Insightful)
Good news for your grandad, but you ought to repeat to yourself 100 times:
Correlation does not imply Causality.
I'm sure I read that beer causes cancer some time ago, and I read the same thing about coffee, wine, sea air and practically everything else that one can do, eat or breathe. This is why I have everything in moderation, because these experts with whom we have entrusted our lives seem totally unable to make their minds up.
Re:Beer vs. "low carb" nuts (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it is more likely that these authors, like many advocates for various causes, have gained just enough knowledge to think they know what's right for everyone else while causing harm due to the remaining things they don't know. There are so many contradictions among fad diets with real health consequences, that I'm suprised the FDA/FTC/etc. haven't stepped in and declared them all as false advertising and bad advice based on faulty evidence. The profit motive isn't very encouraging, either.
Re:I think I speak for all of us ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I thought they already knew that one or two drinks a day is positive, but more are not. I don't see how this changes anything (except what to drink). I've never heard of a single study showing that two drinks a day is bad for anyone without specific contradictions (mostly liver related).
Re:I think I speak for all of us ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Atkins as a 'hack' (Score:3, Insightful)
1) People eat too much.
2) Eating less just makes you hungry. Ergo, it's difficult.
3) If you look at the rates of ``fullness'' to calories, carbohydrates are way down the list.
4) Thus, if you skip the carbs for a while, it lets the body get used to lower total volume of food, without feeling hungry.
5) After the body is used to lower volumes of food, replace the highly energy dense foods with low energy density foods.
6) Loose weight.
Thus, the whole diet is just a hack, to get people to eat less without going through the tough phase of being hungry at the start.
Note that step 4 is to ``skip'' the carbs. That is, eat the steak, and the veg, skip the fries. Not, eat a bigger steak in place of the fries. That defeats the point.
When viewed in this manner, the Atkins approach has some merit.
Of course, as we all know, when you take a hack, and run with it for a long period, it creates it's own problems. Hack's work for a short period, to get a job done, and then should get refactored into something more wholistic.
What really gets my hackles up is when people order a meal, skip the starchy part, but order a double 'non starchy' part. Way to miss the point!
Re:Alcohol is no health food (Score:2, Insightful)
People that drink a glass of red wine in the evening are likely to be more affluent than the average Coke and Cheetos connoisseur. They will therefore typically have access to much better healthcare and possibly take better care of themselves in general. So how do you figure out if it's the glass of wine in the evening, the yoga classes, the bottled waters, etc. The answer - you can't.
I'll bet you'd also find that owning a luxury vehicle appears to result in a longer lifespan as well.
Re:Alcohol is no health food (Score:2, Insightful)
What you don't hear very much is that industry-supported researchers have different definitions of alcohol than most of us. To them, wine and beer are "different alcohol types", instead of merely different types of alcohol-containing beverages. This gives them quite a lot more wiggle room to say that alcohol is healthy.
If you by alcohol mean ethanol, then the original poster is right: It's probably the most dangerous substance allowed for consumption, and it's dangers have been seriously documented since the double-blind study was invented. All positive effects "alcohol consumption" may have come from the other parts of beer and wine.
Re:Alcohol is no health food (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to watch your health, instead of drinking a glass of wine, drink a litre of grape juice, or a kilo of grapes. Much more healthy than intoxicating your liver with ethanol.
Come on, people here should be educated. Wine = alcohol. Wine = healthy, therefore alcohol = healthy? No.
Re:No such thing as a healthy food... (Score:3, Insightful)
Different people have completely different needs from their diets, depending on their lifestyles. There is nothing wrong with eating craploads of sugars and complex carbs if you are going to use them all in the course of the day.
Many athletes have diets which would make an average person unhealthy. Your diet has to match your lifestyle.