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| Photo of Professor Charles Bamforth by UC Davis Magazine |
Whaddup fellow sippers?
I know I have been M.I.A. the last week or
so, but your homey Ale has been traveling nonstop, including a stay at the
Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and just recently San Diego for a week (look for
my coverage of some awesome beer spots soon!). In the meantime, a recent
article caught my eye regarding the infamous beer belly being a myth!
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| Eeeeeeeeeeeew. |
I get asked about beer
causing that infamous midsection bulge a lot, and particularly regarding why I
don’t have one being the imbiber that I am. Well I always say the constant
workout plan to maintain my "two-pack" certainly helps, plus I am a pretty picky eater. However, I like to boast how beer has less calories than the majority of other alcoholic drinks per glass. It’s more
about the amount of consumption and the typical bar food served with cold ones
which tends to be pretty damn greasy, fried, and yes, unfortunately delicious!
Anyway, I came across this recent article posted in a slick, beer-friendly
website I write for called FirstWeFeast.com which was more than happy to include the claim by Charles Bamforth, a professor of food science
and technology at the University of California Davis and revered beer expert
for decades, who says:
"The beer
belly is a complete myth. The main source of calories in any alcoholic beverage
is alcohol. ...There's nothing magical about the alcohol in beer, it's just
alcohol.”
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Professor Charles Bamforth
While Professor Bamforth is also an Anheuser-Busch endowed
professor of brewing science, facts are facts. Plus, simply put, UC Davis is popularly
regarded as the top brewing school in the country. To add, Dr. Aliyah Sohani—an
alcohol researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital—also chimed in. "You
are drinking [beer] in more quantities than wine or liquor, so you tend to have
more caloric intake," Sohani says. "You are talking about a difference between several hundred
calories a night and a couple hundred.” See the rest of this article here.
So does this say to chug away and sell your treadmill on
craigslist.com? Absolutely not. I am just giving you some more conversation
while you sit at the bar and order a Unibroue La Fin Du Monde...and a spinach
salad.
Cheers!
Ale
