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The theme of this issue, I’m told by Ale Street’s inscrutable editor, Tony Forder, is beer and health. Ah, I think, what better opportunity to address one of the questions I am most frequently posed, namely why I am not the proud possessor of a beer belly.
Because after all, surely there is no health issue more frequently associated with beer drinking than obesity. We can talk all we want about beer’s vitamin content (positive), its effect on the heart (mostly positive) or the strain its metabolization puts on the liver (negative), but when the average person thinks of the stereotypical beer drinker, the image that springs immediately to mind is that of a pot-bellied fellow, t-shirt stretched far over his ample girth. (Or, at least, that’s our North American interpretation. If you happen to be in the U.K., it’s bellies, beards and "wooly jumpers," as they call heavy pull-over sweaters.) The problem is that said image conforms to few of the people I know either in or associated with the beer writing biz.
Witness the above-noted Mr. Forder, who, his penchant for questionable head attire notwithstanding, could pass in a crowd for any ordinary, non-professional beer drinking soul. Or his west coast counterpart, the trim and fit Tom Dalldorf of the Celebrator. Or Pennsylvanian John Hansell, publisher of the Malt Advocate, French Canadian scribe Mario D’Eer and the Midwestern maven of the beer cuisine kitchen, Lucy Saunders. Or Brits Roger Protz, Tim Webb, Jeff Evans and Susan Nowak, the perennially lederhosen-ed Conrad Seidl of Austria and Kiwi Luke Nicholas. The list could go on and on.
The key factor in all of this, certainly for me and, I strongly suspect, for my peers listed above, is moderation coupled with diet and exercise. Plainly put, beer alone will not make you fat. Beer and bad diet and night after night sitting in front of the television, on the other hand, will. But then again, lethargy and poor food alone will also increase your middle, with no help needed from beer.
I drink pretty much every day, and have done so for a long time, but while I can hardly be said to hide from revelry, neither do I overdo it on a regular basis. On the occasions that I do imbibe a trifle too enthusiastically, I try to balance things out over the next few days by limiting my consumption even more than normal, perhaps having only one beer or glass of wine with dinner, rather than one while I’m cooking and another one or two at the table.
It’s the same for me with food: When I return from a trip in which I’ve been dining out night after night, usually eating more than I would at home, I switch to light meals for a few days or a week afterward. And I might exercise a bit more often or intensely than normal. In diet and life, as in great beer, it’s all about balance.
In my view, this is not sanctimony so much as it’s just plain cause-and-effect common sense. If you drink a lot without exercising and being careful about what and how much you eat, you’ll get fat, just as if you stick your hand into a fire, you’ll get burned. It’s the kind of thing we’re supposed to learn in primary school.
What does bother me in all this, I must admit, is the inference behind the original question. People learn that I write about beer, so they assume I must have a belly on me. Do they think this of wine writers, even though where calories are concerned, alcohol is pretty much alcohol? No, of course they don’t, because wine writers would never overindulge in their enjoyment of a bottle or two of fine Bordeaux, would they? (Well, yes, actually, they would, and if the wine were good enough, so would I.) Since wine is this supposedly "sophisticated" beverage, wine writers are generally considered virtuous beyond reproach.
Beer writers, on the other hand, are assumed to be consuming vast quantities of ale and lager, all the time, because that’s what beer drinkers do. Except that they don’t, or at least the majority do not. Some do, of course, particularly at frat parties and the kind of bars where beer is ordered by the tray load, but most of the people I know who enjoy beer, and probably most of those you know, drink their beer for enjoyment rather than stupefaction, just as they drink their wine and rum and whisky and eau-de-vie.
I’ve said it before and no doubt I’ll say it again: Beer is as dignified and sophisticated a beverage as any other, and in and of itself, does not make you fat or lazy or stupid or boorish. And stereotypes suck.
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