Is beer healthy?...
With a resounding YES, I hereby declare that beer consumed
in moderation is healthy! Thank
goodness I could honestly say yes here, or I think I might have set off a boycott
amongst our readership, and certainly risked losing my job here at Four EL!
Beer is considered divine around here at Four EL and everybody on the staff is an aficionado. I know that I’m the resident fitness guy
here, but we have some (self-proclaimed) beer connoisseurs that write for us,
that I’m sure would have loved a chance to field this month’s nutrition
topic. Admittedly, I drink beer almost
daily, but I often find myself in a New
Belgium Fat Tire (Amber Ale) rut, for lack of a better word. Hey, when you find something love, why not
stick with it?! But some of our staff is
out there field-testing in our local San Diego bars & microbreweries by
noon every day, so they no doubt have a more well-rounded palates than I, so I
must confess, a lot of my research was done via the internet. San Diego is also home to some incredible
microbreweries like Stone Brewing and
Port Brewing, so we are also a bit
biased to our home brews!
But let
me dive into this discussion of what criteria it takes to consider a beer a
healthy anyway. Well I just applied the
same criteria that one would to all other foods: Is it nutritious, low in sugar, low in
saturated fats, low in sodium, and relatively low in calories? The good news is most beer inherently qualifies
based on all these criteria! (Caveat: As
long as no more than 2 to 3 are consumed daily for the average man.) In my consideration, alcohol content was a
neutral factor and not a criterion, as there are as many cons as there are pros
regarding alcohol consumption. Generally
speaking, the lower the calorie the beer, the lower it is in alcohol content,
but then the more likely one is to drink more of that particular beer, to
attain the satiety and ‘buzz’ they’re desiring when choosing to drink a beer in
the first place.
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| Originally written for and printed in Four EL magazine by me, OCT 2013 |
