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A few years ago the television show "60 Minutes" ran a story on a startling disparity between heart disease in France and America. Despite a high fat diet including butter, cream, cheese, pate, and pastry, the French subjects had much lower cholesterol counts and incidences of obesity and heart disease than Americans.
The numbers were astounding. The French consumed three times as much saturated animal fat as Americans, yet were only one third as likely to die of heart disease. This story broke at the height of a low fat dieting craze in America It confounded everyone, research professionals and laymen alike, especially when the apparent answer to this highly unfair situation came down to the French mealtime beverage of choice: red wine.
This became known as the French paradox, and the story swept the nation, leaving in its wake a mass of conflicting emotions. First was righteous indignation that some people (from France, yet) could eat whatever they wanted with impunity, while we Americans had been working so hard to eliminate fat (and all the pleasurable foods that contain it) from our diets. Then there was joy and liberation at finally being able to eat the foods we had been denying ourselves. Not to mention the pleasure of being able to freely consume red wine as if it were a health food. But still people wondered: why was red wine the magic bullet?
Further investigation and clinical studies confirmed that the consumption of one to two glasses of red wine per day does lead to a reduced risk of coronary disease, stroke, and certain types of cancer, even in those with a diet rich in fat. The apparent reason is the antioxidant effects of polyphenols in red wine. Polyphenols, also known as tannins, are chemicals that occur naturally in many types of plants, including in grape skins and seeds. These tannins are dissolved into the wine during fermentation, and give red wine its color. Since red wine is fermented with the crushed grape skins still present, while white wine fermentation removes the skins to achieve a pale color, red wine contains more polyphenols than white wines.
Polyphenols act as antioxidants, which are substances that scavenge free radicals from the body (free radicals are chemicals that can cause the type of cellular damage that can change healthy cells to cancerous ones). The presence of antioxidants in the bloodstream can inhibit or prevent some types of cancer, by ridding the body of these free radicals. All of which was good news for wine drinkers, and made sales of red wine go through the roof. Beer drinkers, on the other hand were left to wonder why there were no apparent healthful benefits from their beverage of choice.
As it turns out, however, red wine is not the only healthy alcoholic beverage. Follow up studies to the "60 Minutes" story have found that moderate daily intake of beer also has many of the desirable effects of red wine, and then some. Both beer and wine have been shown to thin the blood slightly, reducing the risk of blood clots, stroke, and arthosclerosis, or thickening of the arteries, which can lead to heart attacks. They both may also help ward off development or progression of neurological and neurodegenerative disorders like senile dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, although research on this front is still ongoing.
And beer has also been found to decrease blood levels of cholesterol, specifically the level of oxidized low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol, known as bad cholesterol. A study at the University of Western Ontario that measured cholesterol in subjects before and after they drank two beers showed lower levels of LDL cholesterol after the beer was consumed. This is most likely due to polyphenols present in barley malt, which appear to have the same effect as the polyphenols in red wine.
Other research has focused on flavonoids, which are polyphenol compounds responsible for the dark colors in fruits, vegetables, tea, chocolate, red wine, and beer. These compounds have also been proven to prevent oxidation of cholesterol, along with inhibiting allergies, inflammation, and cancer development and growth. Flavonoids are more plentiful in dark beer and red wine than in pale beer and white wine.
Before we all get excited and start drinking like sailors on leave, there is a caveat — moderation. The most positive effects resulted from consumption of two beers daily. After more than three beers the level of good (HDL) cholesterol was reduced. Similarly, while a 2003 study published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology found that daily moderate use of wine or beer lessens the likelihood of developing stomach ulcers, and possibly inhibits the growth of ulcer-causing H. pylori bacteria, higher consumption was shown to actually increase the risk of developing ulcers.
The good news is that the reason we all drink in the first place, the relaxing buzz that we all enjoy, is beneficial also. The tranquilizing effect of beer or wine, that familiar sensation of well-being that comes after the first drink or two, is actually good for us, helping us to relax and de-stress. Accompanying this mild euphoria in beer drinkers is a slight energizing effect from the natural malt sugars present in beer, which helps slough off the rigors of a taxing day and thus facilitates better enjoyment of leisure time. In short, drinking beer makes us happy, and happiness is good for our health and well-being.
When you look at the nutritional composition of beer versus wine, beer clearly stands head and shoulders above. Malted barley gives beer carbohydrates (although ounce for ounce, less than apple juice or cider), essential and non-essential amino acids, and over 30 different minerals and trace elements, including magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium. Beer has more vitamin B than wine, including B6, B12, folic acid, and niacin, along with lesser amounts of vitamins A, D and E.
Two pints of beer provide 60 percent of the minimum daily requirement of Niacin, 50 percent of magnesium, 40 percent of phosphorus, 35 percent of vitamin B6, and 20 percent of both vitamin B2 and potassium. Unfiltered beers like hefe-weizen, wit beer, and cask ales also contain additional B vitamins from the yeast still in the beer. Brewers yeast is so vitamin packed that people that don’t even drink beer take it as a stand-alone vitamin supplement.
And lastly, hops in beer are a natural sedative and complement the relaxing effects of the alcohol. The bitterness that hops impart stimulates the palate and appetite, making beer the perfect aperitif. A recently discovered compound in hops called xanthohumol is getting a lot of attention from the scientific community (see related story) for its potential in fighting cancer. Although further research is still needed to determine how much xanthohumol is present in most beers, and how long it stays in the body, this would seem to be vindication for all the hopheads out there. Double IPAs all around!
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