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Furore over healthy gains of moderate beer intake

By Wole Oyebade
01 October 2015   |   1:10 am
News of mama’s demise sends shockwaves down the spines of Emeka. For seconds he was speechless. He remembered a sage saying once a child is born, he is old enough to die. But this is not a child; she is a great-grandmother that has lived 81 years, yet the hard news still troubles Emeka.
England’s Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC) recent study, Beer: Quality, Safety and Nutritional Aspects, along with several other studies, indicates that two or three alcoholic drinks a day greatly reduce mortality rates, especially those involving cardiovascular disease. Belgian researcher, Dr. Van Rootrem, in fact advocates drinking beer every day to increase life expectancy by at least 10 years

England’s Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC) recent study, Beer: Quality, Safety and Nutritional Aspects, along with several other studies, indicates that two or three alcoholic drinks a day greatly reduce mortality rates, especially those involving cardiovascular disease. Belgian researcher, Dr. Van Rootrem, in fact advocates drinking beer every day to increase life expectancy by at least 10 years

News of mama’s demise sends shockwaves down the spines of Emeka. For seconds he was speechless. He remembered a sage saying once a child is born, he is old enough to die. But this is not a child; she is a great-grandmother that has lived 81 years, yet the hard news still troubles Emeka.

He had seen mama that morning and there was nothing to suggest her end was near.

He shivered entering the bedroom where mama had breathed her last rather quietly. Everything was intact, except for the occupant. As usual, mama had swept the floor clean; dusted the ceramics and set of wares she had never used in over 40 years. She had carefully laid the bed too as part of her daily routine.

The next item Emeka noticed on a stool forced smiles on his face – a beer bottle that is halfway down. She kept her promise to drink till the end, Emeka thought.

“Mama’s love for beer is a mystery I would never unravel,” says Emeka. “She had often said that be it in pleasure or pain, a beer in never sour or out of place.”

Emeka recalled while he was much younger, he had noticed mama’s habit of going to functions, especially funerals, with empty beer bottles.

“In her bag are usually two empty bottles of different popular brands. Hardly would she return without those bottles already filled. One day, she explained that she hates drinking in public and since bottles are more important than the content, ‘I help them provide the empty bottle in exchange for the beer’,” Emeka said.

He is not unaware of claims that ‘alcohol’ just like smoking is dangerous to health. A friend of his was in fact banned from drinking after a kidney transplant. “On hearing arguments like this, mama would say she had been drinking beer before my mother was born and it has never failed her. ‘If it (beer) makes your friend sick, then you he must have been drinking from the wrong bottles’.”

Emeka’s grandmother is apparently not the longest serving fan of the brewing industry. Several are global accounts of even centenarians that are devoted to beer bottles and among them is the American, Agnes Fenton.

Fenton, popularly called “Aggie” reached 110 in August and in an interview, she said her daily drinking habit was what got her this far. She enjoyed three bottles of beer, plus a shot of scotch every day for almost 70 years.

According to her, she actually received the three-beer-a-day advice from a doctor, after having a benign tumor removed many years ago – her only serious health problem to date.

Since very few people are privilege to reach the centenarian club, experts said it was impossible to know for sure what’s really responsible for the extraordinary good health. Studies show that centenarians have a few characteristics in common—they are rarely obese or have a history of smoking, and may have an ability to handle stress better than the majority of people.

Citing examples like Emeka’s grandmother and Aggie among several others, researchers are becoming more vocal to share the health benefits of beer, like their anti-alcohol advocates had done in the past. Is there a link between drinking beer and longevity, their answer is yes!

Belgian researcher, Dr. Van Rootrem, in fact advocates drinking beer every day to increase life expectancy by at least 10 years. Physical activity and diets would have only minimal effect on life expectancy, he concluded in a recent study.

For him, there is only one thing to do: drinking beer, and do not exceed three beers a day! “Ultimately, aging is a consequence of a high metabolic rate, which has the effect of increasing the number of free radicals we consume. If you test your body by drinking beer, the body seems to adapt to the situation by slowing your metabolism. This is an illustration of ‘what does not kill you makes you stronger’,” Rootrem said.

His advice was the daily intake of 25 to 50cl of beer a day. He is not the first to advance this thesis. The Pasteur Institute had suggested that reducing consumption of pure water by replacing the hop-based beverages, the body feels much better.

Globally, beer is the most consumed alcoholic beverage with over 40,000 brands and dated back to the last 7000 years. Contrary to claims that it is made from chemicals, its basic ingredients are water; a starch source, such as malted barley that is converted into sugar; yeast, to ferment the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide and lastly, hops to give it flavour.

Senior Strategy Manager, Nigerian Breweries, Tony Agenmonmen, said the ingredients show that beer, which he described as the “innocent victim of the beverage industry” is actually natural contrary to misgivings by people that do not properly understand it.

Sourced from nature and brewed into beer, Agenmonmen such basic ingredients could only be zero cholesterol, rich in fibre, lots of antioxidants and calories that are not more than that of an orange juice.

Compare to wine that is often linked to a good heart; beer has turned out to be healthier. Citing a research published by the United States Department of Agriculture, Agenmonmen observed that while table wine contained 77 calories per serving, spirits contained 250 calories, apple juice, 47 calories and orange juice, 42 calories, beer contained fewer calories than all of them with 41 calories per serving.

For Vitamin B components, beer has been found to be richer than red wine. The fact sheet in B Vitamins of Beer compared to Wine shows: Niacin (B3), 16 to 1 per cent; Riboflavin (B2) 17 to 2 per cent; Pyridoxine (B6) 17 to 2 per cent; Foliate 10-45 to 0-5 per cent; Pantothenic Acid (B5) 8 to 1 per cent and Biotin (B7) 17 to 1 per cent, in that order. “If both are students, Beer will be a First class and Red Wine will be a failure,” Agenmonmen said.

A professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Ibadan, Tola Atinmo, concurred that there were sufficient studies in favour of beer’s nutritional claims and their benefits to consumer.

Simply put, they are benefits that are derived from yeast, barley, hops and water – all basic ingredient of beer.

“Hops is bitter and good for the liver and kidney, yeast is good for the eye, barley provides energy for the body while water is naturally recommended for the body,” Atinmo said.

Generally, there are five to 11 carbohydrate grams in one 12-ounce bottle of beer. Milk has 18 grams. Soft drinks have 36 grams.

Thanks to its malted barley, beer also contains protein, at the rate of 0.7 to 2.1 grams per bottle. While most of the larger proteins are lost during the brewing process, beer still contains all the essential amino acids.

Another benefit of drinking beer is the water, which, among other things, prevents dehydration and helps maintain electrolyte balances. A bottle of beer has between 327 and 337 grams of water, as opposed to 12 ounces of wine, which is 302 to 323 grams water, or soft drinks, which have 315 grams of water.

However, beer requires moderation. Experts observed that though beer is low in fat, but beer drinkers turn up with bellies that are not from drinking a bottle but a reward for a lot of bottles in o
ne sitting.

An excess of beer can be especially detrimental for three reasons: for carbonation, calories, and alcohol. Carbonation can neutralize stomach acids and this hampers digestion, so people trying to lose weight should avoid beer with meals.

Over-consumption of alcohol is responsible for all sorts of nasty things, including cirrhosis of the liver and addiction. However, the England’s Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC) recent study, Beer: Quality, Safety and Nutritional Aspects, along with several other studies, indicates that two or three alcoholic drinks a day greatly reduce mortality rates, especially those involving cardiovascular disease.

Atinmo added: “Direct studies in which alcohol was “control fed” to humans showed that, under normal living conditions, moderate alcohol consumption (example 60–75 g alcohol per day, which is equivalent to approximately two litres of average strength beer daily) had no measurable impact on energy balance and body weight over a period of approximately one month.

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