Is beer better (or worse) for you than wine?

I do honestly have kind of a hard time making fun of fad diets. I don't want to discourage people who are concerned about their health and are trying to improve it. Gluten-free in particular is difficult because for most Americans, decreasing your carb intake is a really good way to improve your health, and going gluten-free means you'll skip that morning bagel. But at the same time it's frustrating because it's the wrong target, which means they skip out on good foods due to a misguided, but still helpful, goal.

On the other hand, paleo is an actively harmful diet[1], so I want to encourage a scientific approach to nutrition. But I don't want to discourage people who are more interested in fads than science from being concerned about health, either. Argh.

The marketing is endlessly hilarious, though. My cat's food has a gluten-free label, no joke.

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/09/10/3842158.ht...

This was actually the topic of the closing address at the Master Brewers Association of America (basically a modern guild meeting + trade show).

The main thrust of the talk was that nutritionally, beer and wine should be about equal, but everyone believes that wine is healthy and beer isn't - which is not scientifically accurate.

A more nuanced view: ethanol (alcohol) accounts for nearly all of the cardio-vascular benefits, and thus, beer and wine are equal. Wine contains more anti-oxidants and anti-aging properties, but you would need to get very (very) drunk to get those benefits (well past the Ballmer Peak). Beer, specifically craft beers, have great phytonutrients and macronutrients - and you can get those benefits from a single bottle.

In my opinion: advantage beer.

Sensitivity to gluten-containing foods has been documented in lots of people without celiac. However...

* People with IBS may find their symptoms improved by going on a low-FODMAP diet. That does take out bread, but it also might involve taking out onions because of their sugar content. Doesn't have anything to do with gluten per se.

* People with digestive problems may find that alcohol is an irritant. But then tequila should also be dropped or moderated; doesn't have to do with gluten.

* People who do an elimination diet and find that standard American bread upsets their stomach may also find that more fermented items, in moderation, aren't a problem. American bread will cause me embarrassing borborygmus and other digestive problems, but moderate consumption of beer or northern european sourdough rye is not bad. Someone once told me this was a difference in reaction to the glutenin vs gliadin proteins that make up gluten, but who knows. No one knows the science yet, but bread sure does give me non-celiac trouble!

For beer and wine, it's really useful and interesting to consider the effects of the processing and fermentation. Malted barley is used in most beers: you sprout and then roast the barley, releasing and cooking all kinds of sugars that you would not find in beef-barley soup. Barley has hordein instead of gliadin (rye has secalin, oats have avenin). Then the yeast crunches through those sugars to create alcohol and carbon dioxide and who knows what else. Fermentation often does have an effect on these proteins and can in fact have an effect on the amino acids that people with celiac are sensitive to, but we don't really know what's going on entirely. There are some Italians who can make gluten-free sourdough wheat bread in a lab just through getting the right yeasts going.

Beer, wine, pickles, yogurts, sausages, fermented shark... With all we are finding out about microbiomes inside our guts, there is going to be an explosion of commercialization of these traditional fermented foods. Start your own now so that you don't have to be reliant on corporate mega-strains in the future! Microbiome independence now! :)

In particular, a pint of beer does have a lot of polyphenols which may be good for, say, sports recovery: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21659904

Some people are trying to make a lower-alcohol, salty beer that would be a real sports-recovery drink.

Anyone here have experience with old-country low-alcohol everyday beverages like sima, kotikalja, kvass, etc? Europe used to have a grand tradition of these low-alcohol "near-beers" or "malt beverages" that people would drink on the farm. They were hydrating and had a lot of the health benefits of above, but since the ethanol was low I'm not sure what effect they had on cardiovascular health.

Also, the Romans and others down south in Europe used to water their wine heavily -- they drank a larger volume through the day but kept ethanol ingestion moderate. I wonder what the health ramifications were.

A theory I have heard in the UK is that brewers put chemicals in beer specifically to give you a hangover, so you think you must have had a good night.

Whilst I think that is, ahem, unlikely, the monopolisation of beer production by a shrinking cabal of vested interests is hammering beer quality here. And the evidence certainly suggests that unwanted chemicals - either in the product itself or introduced through badly maintained pipes in pubs - have a significant part to play. The article references 'congeners' as the culprits here, but it is noticeable that, eg, one can go on a significant bender in Germany and come up fresh as a daisy the next day, presumably thanks to that nation's enlightened beer purity laws.