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1. A lot of women drink beer. According to a 2003 Mediamark Research Inc. report, female beer drinkers constitute just under 40 percent of total beer drinkers in the U.S. The amount of beer they actually consume comes to about 20 to 25 percent of the total volume. Chances are, however, that if you’re reading this column (or writing it, for that matter), you consume more beer than most of the men you know.
2. The truth hurts: women prefer light beer and malternatives to regular beer. Amstel Light estimates that women constitute as much as 45 percent of its market. Likewise, nearly half the consumers of malternatives (e.g. Mike’s Hard Lemonade) are female, according to a May 2002 article in Restaurants USA.
3. Women are more likely than men to be able to discern the flavor nuances in craft beer. That’s because women are more likely to be "supertasters." Supertasters make up about a quarter of the U.S. population, nontasters make up another quarter, and the remaining half are simply tasters, according to Dr. Linda Bartoshuk of Yale University’s School of Medicine. Supertasters actually have more tastebuds than other people.
4. The level of alcohol in the blood rises faster in women than in men, according to Beer & Health (www.bierengezondheid.be). Even when a man and a woman have exactly the same body weight and drink exactly the same amount of alcohol, the alcohol level is higher in the woman.
5. A recent study conducted by the University of Missouri-Columbia found that women have worse hangovers than men. Lesley King-Lewis, chief executive of Action on Addiction, told BBC News, "Women have lower levels of alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme that digests alcohol in the stomach. This, in combination with a smaller stature and lower body water content, means that women get drunk faster and stay drunk longer." Yikes.
6. We’ve all heard about the old practice of giving Guinness to nursing mothers to promote lactation. We laugh smugly at this outdated advice while secretly wondering, "Is there any truth to it?" Unfortunately for stout-loving moms everywhere, "There is no truth to the old wives’ tale that drinking wine or beer will increase milk supply and enhance milk let down [ejection]," asserts Kathy Kuhn, a lactation consultant for parentsplace.com.
7. If you’re a beer drinker who has borne children in the last 15 years or so, you already know this: There is a lot of conflict surrounding alcohol consumption during pregnancy. Here is a tale of two policies that illustrates why:
"Since there is no known safe level of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, the ACOG [American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians] recommends eliminating all alcohol consumption during pregnancy to optimize your chances for a healthy baby." – from DiscoveryHealth.com
"There is no conclusive evidence of adverse effects in either growth or IQ at levels of consumption below 120gms (15 units) per week. Nonetheless it is recommended that women should be careful about alcohol consumption in pregnancy and limit this to no more than one standard drink per day." – from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (Great Britain) web site.
8. Women brewed and sold most of the beer drunk in medieval England – roughly 17 million barrels per year, estimates Judith M. Bennett in her book Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England.
9. Women often get a bad rap for their role in instituting Prohibition, but did you know that they were also involved in the repeal? Proponents of Prohibition were fed up with factory workers coming home from the saloon drunk and abusing the wife and kids. The Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform came along and turned the home protection argument on its head: it declared that repeal would protect families from the crime, corruption, and secretive drinking that Prohibition had created, according to Kenneth D. Rose’s American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition.
10. Renowned food writer M.F.K. (Mary Frances Kennedy) Fisher, considered by many the grand dame of gastronomy, always kept "a quart bottle of good beer in the icebox," according to her husband. Fisher wrote: "A pleasant aperitif, as well as a good chaser for a short quick whiskey, as well again for a fine supper drink, is beer."
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