I often get asked why I have such a thing against low-carb beers with the suggestion being that I bring a wine-tosser's snobbery to beer. This isn't really true. Beer is all about enjoyment. You can bring a judge's forensic palate to beer to determine whether a beer is "good" or not according to an objective standard, but the real test for me is a subjective one: whether you enjoy a particular beer or not...a beer you enjoy is a "good" beer because beer is for drinking, not judging.
That said, I do have a particular antipathy for low-carb beers. If you enjoy drinking them for their flavour - and a lot of people do - that's well and good, stop reading now. If you are drinking them because you have been sold the idea they they are the key to you becoming the next cover model for Men's or Women's Health, you might want to rethink your weight-loss strategy.
I have done a few interviews with nutritionist Trent Watson for the Beer Show on 4BC and he has a refreshing attitude to beer and life. In our most recent interview we were talking about beer consumption and health. Among the things Trent said were:
- When you look at an alcohol intake of 1-2 standard drinks a day, the relative risk of death or disease is actually lower than in people who consume none - this is teetotallers. Once you move to 4, 5 or 6 drinks (or more), you see the relative risk of death or disease increase quite significantly.
- The reasons for this aren't clear. It's uncertain whether there are actual benefits in moderate amounts of alcohol or whether someone who can moderate that aspect of their life is more likely to moderate other aspects of their life by engaging in moderate exercise and moderate their intake of fruit and vegatables for example.
- Beer has nearly as many anitoxidants as wine has but you shouldn't rely on your alcoholic beverages to provide your antioxidants...at the level that they exist, if you're relying on beer or wine to provide your antioxidant requirements you're in trouble for other reasons - mainly point 1 above!
- For the average male, 178cm tall and weighing 70-80 kilograms, the average daily energy intake to maintain that weight is approximately 10,000 kilojoules. For an average woman of 65 kilograms the maintenance intake is approximately 8-9,000 kilojoules. If you consume more kilojoules than this you will gain weight, if you consume fewer you will lose weight.
- An average full strength beer contains about 550 KJs, a reduced alcohol beer about 400 KJs, an average full-strength low-carb beer 460 kilojoules. So an average low-carb beer contains more kilojoules than the average mid-strength beer and contributes more to your daily intake of kilojoules...even though lower in carbs. (So, if you substitute two low-carb beers for your favourite full-strength beer you are saving only about 200 kilojoules from an intake of 10,000... saving 2% of your daily kilojoules intake or the equivalent of a whole 4 water crackers. Of course, if you're drinking more than 2 standard drinks regularly the studies would indicate carbs and kilojoules are the least of your worries.)
- Trent's advice for drinking a beer or two...drink a beer that you enjoy... "Enjoy it, enjoy the flavour!"
Given all of this, my biggest problem with low-carb is that despite their healther image, at moderate consumption levels they do next nothing to assist weight loss. What they do though is single-handedly confirm all of the negative stereotypes about beer: that beer makes you fat. It was this media release that prompted this diatribe. You never see "wine lover wants to lose weight" stories, or talk of "wine bellies" in the media even though wine generally has more kilojoules than heavy beer. You'd think beer was the only beverage with alcohol in it.
Wine would seem to have the better PR team. Rather than try to educate people, brewers seem to have chosen the path of least resistance and are jumping on the low-carb bandwagon.
Thanks to the growth in "craft" beer - and that includes the craft beers from the big two - beer has been attracting growing attention and respect but just when this has started to occur the low-carb category legitimises all of the negative stereotypes about beer for a short-term bump in sales. It's just like setting fire to your house when you run out of firewood. Sure, you'll be toasty for a while, but then what? I wonder how this will affect beer in the long term? If you legitimise an erroneous perception about your product, one that essentially tells people that there is an unhealthy or negative aspect to it, doesn't that jeopardise the long term interests of your product? When the current low-carb fad has passed it will only ever get harder to reduce the negative perceptions about beer left by legitimising them in the first place.
Drink Less, drink better.