Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, the news is out: Beer is better for you than milk.
I’ve been saying this for some time now, but I was glad to see the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition weigh in on my side of the argument last week. The most recent issue of the journal reported the recommendations on beverage consumption of a panel made up of some of the most highly respected medical authorities in the country.
As you might expect, soda didn’t fare well. But the big news was the stark contrast between milk and beer. The typical adult male, the report states, can consume up to 24 ounces of beer a day. That’s two big glasses.
How about milk? Don’t touch it, say the experts, unless the fat is removed. At that point, of course, it tastes like chalk. So perhaps you won’t mind that you can have only one glass a day of fat-free milk.
As for beer, it’s already fat-free. But that’s not the only reason it’s better for you than milk. There’s that wonderful, health-giving alcohol, too. “Moderate alcohol consumption has been associated with some health benefits,” says the report. Alcohol reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke, two fatal conditions exacerbated by all that saturated fat in dairy products.
No sooner did the news of this report get out than the inevitable puritanical reaction was provoked. Americans can’t believe something that is fun to drink like beer could also be good for you. I saw one online poll in which 58 percent of the respondents said they still believed milk is better for you than beer – no matter what those smarty-pants scientists might think.
But the scientists are right. The more you study the matter, the more obvious it becomes that there is something a little nutty about chasing down giant animals, manipulating their external organs and drinking whatever drops out.
Perhaps no one has studied the matter more deeply than Sol Katz, the groundbreaking University of Pennsylvania anthropologist who was the first to link the advent of civilization to man’s discovery of beer.
Katz, author of the prize-winning work “The Encyclopedia of Food and Culture,” first made headlines some years ago with his theory that it was beer that sparked the growth of modern civilization. His theory was simple but logical. Evidence showed that the early farmers grew barley as opposed to wheat. And barley makes good beer but awful bread.
I called Katz the other day to discuss the new recommended guidelines. He wasn’t surprised.
“Milk is really only consumed in a few areas of Earth,” Katz told me. “Beer is consumed almost everywhere.”
People in China, for example, think there is something positively weird about the concept of adult humans consuming a liquid meant to get a baby cow through its first few months of life.
“They have such an aversion that it’s sort of like a joke that they can smell a Westerner coming if he or she has had some cheese,” Katz said of the Chinese.
As for beer, its ubiquitous status among widely disparate cultures arises because it’s so simple to make. You basically just soak grain in water for a few days. The resulting fermentation induces a number of salutary changes in both the grain and the liquid. Barley, which lacks complete protein, is transformed by the yeast into a stew containing all of the essential amino acids. Vitamins are added as well. Not only that, the process kills many of the deadly bacteria in the water.
Then there are the phytates in beer. They help the body absorb calcium. Despite what the dairy lobby says, you can get that calcium from many foods other than milk. Seafood is a good source, says Katz. A nice English ale with some fish and chips? Just what the doctor ordered – except perhaps for those chips. But no diet is perfect.
This new report, I believe, brings society face to face with what may be the most important question facing the nation today: Why do we tax beer and not milk and soda? As it now stands, a gallon of that liquid health food made from barley and hops is subject to 58 cents in federal tax, not to mention state tax. Soda and milk, meanwhile, escape those taxes despite their deadly nature.
Reversing these policies would be good not just for our physical but also our fiscal health. Americans consume more than three times as much soda and milk as they do beer. It therefore follows that taxing milk and soda rather than beer would produce about three times as much revenue for the public coffers – while encouraging healthy consumption habits as well.
So that is my suggestion as we head into St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve even got a slogan for it: Taxation with fermentation. Write your congressman.
Paul Mulshine is a columnist for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.
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