‘Health conscious beer’…WTF?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted to BeerMatt and there are a lot of reasons for that, mainly I’ve been flat out. But I just received my “What’s Brewing” newsletter from my old friends DB Breweries (you can read about them here, here, here and here.) and, there’s nothing like low-carb beer to get me writing. What caught my eye was the headline, “Health conscious beer increases popularity.”

Why this struck me is that I remember earlier this year an Australian academic caused a kerfuffle when he suggested that low-carb beers are an “insidious health risk” because they are marketed as a healthy option and may actually encourage people to drink more.

“Nooooooo,” howled the brewing industry when this claim was made. “We don’t market these beers as being healthy, we’re not allowed to do that.”

“ ‘Low carb’ is just a statement of fact, there’s nothing on the bottle to suggest that the beers are healthy.”

But then in their newsletter, DB Breweries are calling it a ‘health conscious beer’.

Read the whole thing and tell me if you’re left with the impression that this is beer is healthier for you. It never actually says that and I am sure that DB Breweries have had a team of lawyers go over the wording of the and to make sure that it doesn’t actually cross the line – but its toes are right up on the line and its shadow extends three feet across it.

Look closely and it’s like one of the old Mad Magazine fold-ins, make “A” meet “B” and something else emerges.

The key elements are:

• It’s a health conscious beer
• It's aim is not to add to growing beer bellies
• It is brewed 33% longer than standard beer to remove unwanted sugars and reduce the beer’s level of carbohydrates
• The beer is meeting a growing consumer demand among New Zealanders who are increasingly conscious of the way they look and feel
• “More and more Kiwis love beer but naturally they’re not so fond of beer bellies!”  “Export 33 is full strength, full flavour and low carb so now you can enjoy beer that is less filling without a taste trade-off.”

The last is the clincher. Notice how cleverly the first and second sentences of the last point are non sequiturs. It looks like they logically follow, but they don’t. “Kiwis don’t want beer bellies”. “Our beer is low-carb and less filling.” The latter doesn’t actually relate to the former, and DB can’t be said to be saying their beer is healthy, although the objective is quite clearly to make the connection between low-carbs and avoiding a beer belly – or else, why put out the media release?

In fact, according to DB’s own website, the difference in kilojoules (the energy provided by the alcohol and carbs in the beer that, if unused by the body, causes weight gain) between this ‘health conscious beer’ (425 kilojoules) and DB Draught (462) is 37 kilojoules or roughly half of one percent of a daily intake of 8000 kilojoules. A mouthful of your second bottle and you’ve consumed the same calories as their regular draught beer. The difference is the same is two rice crackers – the plain, not flavoured version.

Incidentally, I would burn 215 kilojoules doing 10 minutes of light gardening.

As ever, if you enjoy Export 33 - or any other beer for its flavour – drink up and enjoy, that’s the whole purpose of beer after all. But if you drink Export 33 because you’re trying to avoid a beer gut or you consider it to be a ‘health conscious beer’, you are every bit as gullible as DB Breweries hope you are.

Oh, and send me your bank account details – I have US$5,000,000 that we can split….

Guilt-free beer drinking?

I know I’m sounding like a broken record – or one of those crazy, bearded end-of-the-world-protesters - but here’s another media release promoting the joys of low-carb that just drives me crazy.

Guilt-free, beer-drinking pleasure at the Bavarian Bier Cafés

20^th February, 2009

The Bavarian Bier Cafés continue to cement their position as a beer-lovers paradise introducing two new low-carb preservative-free beers at each of their five venues.

The new Leichte Weisse and Fürsten Gold Lager from Bavarian bier producer Thurn & Taxis, are perfect for beer connoisseurs fed up with the string of beers that are low in carbs but also low in flavour currently on the market.

Brewed in Bavaria, both beers are made according to Germany’s strict purity laws meaning they contain only four ingredients – hops, malt, yeast and water – and have absolutely no preservatives, so they’re not just better for your waistline but better for your hangover as well!

The Leichte Weisse is a light and refreshing alternative to traditional Weissbiér. Light and zesty with tropical fruit and citrus characters, it’s refreshing on its own or the perfect accompaniment to the Bavarian Bier Café’s famous Jäger Schnitzel.

The Fürsten Gold Lager has a fresh, malty flavour perfect for those who love to savour their beer, or as an accompaniment to meat dishes such as the Bavarian Bier Cafés’ selection of Gourmet Bavarian Sausages.

Both the Thurn & Taxis Leichte Weisse and the Thurn & Taxis Fürsten Gold Lager are available on tap from your local Bavarian Bier Café.

Now, I don’t know what these beers taste like and, as with any beer, if YOU like it – drink up & enjoy. But, if you are drinking enough beer that switching to low-carb beer makes any appreciable difference to your waistline, you will be shopping around for a new liver before you need a new pair of pants.

How can you promote low-carb beer as being "guilt-free" and "better for your waistline" and not infer the rest of your beers will make your patrons fat b@stards? When the low-carb wave recedes (and it will) beer is going to have an even more deeply entrenched - and wrong - stigma attached to it that I fear will just accelerate the decline in consumption it already faces.

Drink for flavour.

Drink less, drink better. If you do that, you can always drink beer guilt free!

Lose weight now, ask me how...

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.

Yippee, another low-carb beer!

I normally eagerly await new beers from Gage Roads.  It's a good brewery and their recent run of seasonals has been pretty good. So when I received a media release today about a new beer I opened it expectantly, wondering what delights they had in store for me...instead I found a media release trumpeting a new low-carb beer, Kutt. I will say at the outset that I haven't tried Kutt yet and it could be the greatest beer of 2008...but I doubt it. No offence to anyone who actually likes likes low-carb beers for their flavour, but everyone else is getting conned. Compared to almost anything else you are drinking, ALL BEERS ARE LOW-CARB! So much so that last year Lion Nathan started marketing XXXX Gold as lower-carb - they could simply because it fit the definition, not because they changed it in any way.

Fosters publishes a table of the carbohydrate levels of its beers which makes for fascinating reading. VB has 3g of carbohydrates per 100ml of beer (roughly 10g for a stubby), Carlton Draught has 2.7g, Crown Lager 3.1g and Redback Original has 3.6g. Amazingly Guinness (with its "pork chop in every glass") has 3.6g per 100ml. These  all have fewer carbs than milk (4.9g/100ml) or chocolate milk (9g/100ml). Then there's 15.7g of carbs in 20g of plain flour and 21.7 grams in a 35 gram Tim Tam.

Now, I'm not suggesting you drink beer instead of milk, but it does put things in some perspective. I would rather forgo the Tim Tam and have a beer with real flavour.

Beers that are marketed as low carbs are just that, marketing. All you need to do is read the second paragraph of a media release about a new beer:

"It is presented in unique packaging that reflects the style and aspirations of the consumer. The stylish graphics and the extra long bottle bring something new and fresh to the low carb beer market."

Huh?? The graphics and the bottle...what about the taste of the beer? Shouldn't that be what Kutt brings to the low carb beer market? Nope, jumping on the low-carb bandwagon (while trying to shoe-horn in mentions of craft beer - but I'll write about that later), slick graphics and clear, trendy bottle. This is the beer equivalent of a fast-talking, leased-Mercedes, dripping in gold jewellery, Gold Coast life coach.

I don't mean to single out Kutt - it equally applies to all of the low-carb beers - though Kutt certainly turns the marketing up to 11.

If you like the flavour of low-carb beers, you might find something here. If you force yourself to drink low-carb thinking it's good for you, have something you actually like (in moderation) and lay off on the Tim Tams.

Me, I'll wait 'till Gage Roads' next seasonal comes out...