A Pint a Day (1996) | Hacker News Reader

A Pint a Day (1996)

chemistryworld.com

59 pointssusam57 comments

Studies on alcohol consumption are always flawed due to socioeconomic factors. Adults who can afford to have some beers or wine on an evening are more affluent, therefore are more likely to have private healthcare, can afford nutritious diets and are more likely to exercise regularly. Until we can find a way to control for these factors, studies into the health benefits of alcohol are very misleading

Cheap beer is cheap. Around a dollar a pint. The homeless drink beer because it is the cheapest way to get alcohol.

Even when we only consider the nutritious value, it is about 200 kcal/$, about as much as chicken. Not cheap but definitely not fancy.

Socioeconomic factors have to be taken into account, but I don't think the rich drink more beer, they just get better quality, and maybe in a bar rather than from a supermarket.

Beer fasts. I'd love to try it.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/man-commits-beer-fast-lent-l...

I couldn't find any controlled studies offhand.

I'm allergic to beer, and it's the strangest thing. If I have one normal beer, the next day my face is flush and my eyes are red. Two and I've got a hangover and a runny nose.

I'm not much of a drinker, but other alcohol doesn't affect me like this - a cocktail or two and I'm fine the next day.

Bread and wheat doesn't seem to have negative effects, so I have no idea what it could be.

Anyone else experience similar things or have any idea what it could be?

The ingredients common to all beer are malted barley, hops, water, and yeast. So maybe hops?

Or barley.

Although the lack of issues around bread and wheat seem to rule it out, I‘d still recommend having a check for celiac disease.

Maybe do a trial with alcoholic yet gluten-free beer.

This study could be more rigorous. I volunteer for the control group as long as someone else is buying.

> one normal beer

I mean, in the right setting, that could be a liter. Are you only drinking beer at Hofbräuhaus?

Histamine?

I also can't drink most beer. I sometimes get a hangover and headache from just a single small beer (0.3 liter)

I found that I tolerate beers from some breweries better than others (the type of beer doesn't seem to make a difference).

I suspect that I am allergic to certain yeasts, but to be honest I have no idea.

they add crady things into beer, I heard some type will add oyster shell...

I know someone who recently visited an allergist to investigate a similar response to beer, and testing suggested his issue was sulfites which are a common beer additive

One quibble - in my experience the water content of beer doesn't outweigh the dehydrating property of breaking the seal. The first time I wrongly tried to quench my thirst with multiple beers, on a summer day in the desert when I was 13, I nearly ended up in the hospital with dehydration and heat stroke. Water does work best in those situations, and beer will definitely aggravate dehydration.

> a pint of beer provides about 180 kcal

Then two paragraphs down:

> Contrary to popular opinion, however, beer does not contain any fat. Rather, the pot bellies of heavy drinkers probably result from the effects of alcohol as an appetite stimulant.

But how efficiently are alcohol calories metabolizied? (I think not very)

Depends how regularly someone drinks I think. That's when people may develop a metabolic dependence on alcohol, and withdrawal can be deadly.

I'm pretty sure ultimately, all alcohol must be metabolized. But people who drink more frequently will metabolize more quickly.

I meant how effectively can your body use it as a source of energy. I think the conversion efficiency is much lower than e.g. sugar or fat.

Not sure why you’re downvoted; you’re correct. This 1996 article reflects the debunked 90s logic that eating fat makes you fat.

I think this talk [1] mentions that alcohol is metabolised into fat in the liver, from where it diffuses out in tiny droplets and ultimately settles down as visceral fat.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

"A drink a day makes your brain fog go away"

See data from "The largest human cognitive performance dataset reveals insights into the effects of lifestyle factors and aging" https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.0029...

In particular, the optimal cognitive test results were for ~1 drink a day (0 is worse than 3 drinks!). Also, 7h a sleep a day was the best.

With a disclaimer: correlation is not causation! (E.g. I suspect that some may abstain from alcohol for health reasons.)

I'm doubtful 7h of sleep a night and 1 drink a day can render a given individual more mentally able. I'd guess the causation is that the cognitively most able people just happened to average on these values.

I sleep 8 to 9h a day and only have a couple drinks a month. 7h of sleep would likely mess with me, and I simply can't believe that a drink a day (alcohol, a poison that fogs the mind!) improves anything. Especially for sleep, every individual seems to have their own optimum that's hard to change.

I cannot sleep above seven hours, is the darnest thing, I just wake up five in the morning if I go to bed at 23 and just cannot get to sleep before 22, and if I oversleep or get the pattern disturbed I feel groggy all next day

I think these study searching/advocating for a healthy averages kind of trick people into thinking their patterns are unhealthy, while it seems pretty clear that each person has its own way of functioning, either by environmental or genetic influences, and averaging them might give some insight but not any indication of what's best to each.

Does alcohol free or low alcohol beer provide all the benefits with no downsides?

Another interesting thing I learned was beer cocktails. For example in the mid-west there is a cocktail called Red Beer, which is beer mixed with tomato juice. I understand that it is basically a bloody mary made with beer instead of vodka. I read that many people drink it as a breakfast meal before work.

When you mix small amounts of alcohol in a high ball glass with other ingredients, it becomes even more healthier. You get the slight relaxation plus nutriants and taste.

Have you heard of Bananaweizen before?

It’s a hefeweizen beer mixed with a banana. Relatively common in bars in Germany.

Bananaweizen blew my mind because it was the first time I learned banana juice existed. There are other wheat beer mixes, and there is the whole 'radler' thing too

My favorite beer - Live Oak Hefeweizen - has natural banana notes in it. It seems that’s common for Hefes, anyway.

I’d be curious as to how the bananaweizen tastes and whether it ruins the beer - like a Radler in Britain or Blue Moon which kinda tastes a bit artificial.

I posted in another comment about micheladas, but I think why I make a distinction about that not ruining the beer is due to the complexity of the flavor.

The yeasts used for hefe’s quite often produce banana ester. Many/most yeasts do at certain temperatures and it’s considered an ‘off’ flavour in most styles, but desired in some white beers.

Beer and banana mix pretty well surprisingly.

Radler (beer with some lemonade in it) is also pretty common in Germany, with a similar reputation to what you describe.

This prompted me to search "banana beer", and apparently in some East-African countries there are beers where banana is the main ingredient in the actual mash.

It’s very popular in Texas. In the East (towards Houston) it’s called a Michelada. Towards the west, I’ve heard it called red beer.

It is delightful, and consists of about 50% beer and 50% secret mix (often Clamato, literally: clam and tomato mix). Or, tilt the proportions in either direction as you favor.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelada

It might be delicious, but the concept of clam juice makes me want to barf.

Yep, it's not delicious.

That kind of thing is very common with many kinds of mixtures in Germany, especially apple juice unsurprisingly :) but really all kinds of things. I was shocked because in the UK it is very uncommon to see such a thing. I remember having something similar in Budapest too.

Another German mixed beer drink is Diesel: Beer and Coke. Not a big coke fan but surprisingly good.

Sadly I don't do well with carbs, even beer. One a day brings back depression after about a week. But I like the taste :)

Can't just drink half of it and leave the rest for tomorrow though.

I live in Germany, beer is embedded in culture. I can’t drink one single beer, it doesn’t do anything for me. It’s two or none and afterwards you can do whatever you want. On the other hand, most bottles are 0,33 litres so a 0,5 litre would probably make the cut.

From my own practice of doing a beer fast/having a beer before and after a run, I recommend doing this with non-alcoholic beer, which can have up to 0.5% alcohol by volume.

Sample size 1 and I don’t drink a beer a day but usually several times a week. I’ve been off it for two weeks though (covid) and my digestion seems much better.

I hope this is true

> The modest levels of alcohol in beer improve blood circulation, reducing the risk of heart disease for light drinkers compared with that for heavy drinkers and abstainers.

I'm not sure this still stands up to scrutiny in the current year; iirc when controlling for external factors, any alcohol intake is worse than no alcohol intake.

Either way, yeah, this resonates with me. I drink one beer every afternoon while cooking dinner for my family. It doesn't feel unhealthy, i love the taste, and the ritual of it has a definite de-stressing quality.

Furthermore I'm not a binge or big drinker at all. More than 2 drinks and I feel bad the next day. I hope the health impact in my case is limited.

The real danger is to the psyche from monoamine oxidase inhibition. Beer is a mashed beverage, the boiling of the mash generates Harmala alkaloids. Alcohol is just one part of the story.

Any sources? No clear conclusions about danger show up in a quick Google for concentrated MAO inhibitors, let alone the incidental quantities you would be exposed to in a daily beer.

See my other reply. The quantities are not ”incidental” in daily use, because these alkaloids tend to get stored in brain fatty tissues and have a rather long half-life, measured in weeks.

Unless you're drinking tobacco beer, or a peganum harmala infused brew, I don't think there are MAOI's present in beer. A quick google search doesn't really show anything as well, can you cite any sources?

Sure.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1541-4337... (See table 22)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1530-0277....

Is there an archive link to the second article? The conclusion is not available...

I find the premise interesting, but consider how many supplements/drugs intentionally inhibit MAO's at much higher than ng/L quantities and how promising they seem for Parkinson's (there seem to be more positive studies than negative studies, though the measured effect in both types tends to be quite small). It seems unlikely to be the critical factor determining health effects in alcoholic beverages.

https://www.sci-hub.ru/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/a...

Thanks. Their conclusion: "The contribution of harman in alcoholic beverages to the overall pharmacological and/or toxicological effects of the amine and its relationship to alcoholism needs to be investigated."

And this would be that investigation, from 1996!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8651457/

Just once, I'd like to read a scientific paper that concludes, "We have completed study of this field. No further research is necessary."

lung cancer and cigarette

Not by a long shot. The average person still thinks the culprit is nicotine, when nicotine is rather harmless compared to the addictiveness of concommittantly administered Harmala alkaloids, and to the damage caused by inhaling nano-/microparticulate matter and hot combustion gases.

A lot of things inhibit the monoamine oxidases, but not that many things inhibit them at such small quantities, implying that these Harmala alkaloids are exceptionally bioactive.

Interesting, thanks! So, these MAOIs are not present in the ingredients of beer/wine, but are instead thermally produced (probably some cyclization reactions involving tryptophan or tyrosine?)

Anyway, judging by those tables the problem isn't unique to beer and wine; many other foodstuffs in there as well. And the doses are so low that I don't think you can conclude that beer consumption causes poisoning by monoamine oxidase inhibitors.

Those tables show 1-100 microgram/L concentrations of MAOIs. Compare that to eg. harmaline that requires >100 mg doses for pharmacologically meaningful effects, even accounting for slow metabolism and dose accumulation it seems farfetched.

The problem is not the MAO activity per se: although harman and norharman can cause essential tremor, depression and anxiety, as well as definitely worsen PTSD, some of the MAO-B-inhibiting Harmala alkaloids are beneficial in e.g. Parkinson’s disease. The problem is that the Harmala alkaloids include some neurotoxic ones that cause Parkinson’s disease, and it’s practically impossible to keep them from forming in the same process.

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