Beer & Your Health

The best “controlled study” is looking at what people ate pre-1980s. All you have to do is look at photos and see people were much thinner. What changed? More processed foods, higher meat consumption, and larger portions.

The best thing to do for a diet is get rid of processed food. Those mainly meat diets will catch up to you with clogged arteries if you are eating lots of red meat instead of chicken and fish.

 

Saturated fats are often coupled with other negative health habits, making it difficult to determine the root cause of poor health.

More recent research has downplayed how negative they are. Unfortunately it's only the abstract, but see below. There's more, this is just what I quickly had off-hand:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34684304/

Completely agree overweight individuals are at a higher risk for poor health than normal weight individuals. But that's ignoring the variables of one's lifestyle and overall diet. There are many alcoholics or smokers who are normal weight but are certainly not healthy.

Then there's how bodyfat percentages. One can be "normal" weight but be carrying too much fat. And building/maintaining muscle mass without enough high quality protein can be difficult. Since high quality protein sources are eggs, milk, lean meats...etc.

Not taking in enough food and being underweight can also be problematic (not saying this is you). And you also decreased sodium and sugar, sugar is certainly gaining a lot of traction in health circles as the main culprit of a poor diet. Again, always hard to parse out what works and doesn't work in an uncontrolled environment with multiple variables changing at once.

I'm not advocating for or against vegan or carnivore diets. Again, whatever works for someone and is keeping one healthy, I'm all for that. I simply try not to make definitive statements about singular dietary methods, since it's so difficult to do that in uncontrolled environments from self-reported data for extended periods of time.

 

This!! If you bought everything you ate from the perimeter of the grocery store you'd have vegetables, meat & dairy next to no processed foods. I love y'all but you'll never convince me that a big old bowl of Fruity Pebbles or Count Chocula is healthier than 2 eggs and 4 oz of steak.

 

No

Yeah I've also found I like shopping and looking more than sitting and drinking, so I've cut down on how much I buy or pour things I don't like a lot out, which has helped quite a bit in terms of overall consumption. Shifting to half pours and asking for more samples at breweries has maximized my enjoyment of when I do go, since I'm only going once a month now.

In regards to camps, I've got something coming up in January, and I typically don't have issues cutting it completely out besides being a little sad, but if I train, I won't drink due to being so tired. Makes it easier.

You mentioned lifting, and I personally think hard workouts if possible are the best ways to reduce alcohol consumption, since the fatigue and adrenaline levels personally mean I don't want to get into the stash. I might try that 5/3/1 set honestly, it sounds like you're digging it and I'd love a new program.

 

I think your are focusing on short term health and ignoring long term health. You may feel better in the short treating a carnivore diet over what you had been consuming, but you will pay the price later on. There are controlled studies that look at things like coronary artery disease and plaque build up in people who eat meat vs vegetarians/vegans. Pretty easy for cardiologists to see if they take any genetic predispositions out.

 

I'm sure someone will come on and share some "modern" thinking about processed foods not being a serious health threat, and sugar not being a health threat, and daily sodium consumption of >3,000 mg. being just fine, and high meat consumption being good for your health, etc., etc.

It remains true, no matter how much lipstick folks want to put on this "pig", that overweight people are at higher risk of bad health, and food of any kind that contributes to making one overweight is NOT healthy.

 

I think it's more people not following conventional medical advice due to the higher volume of poor foods out there that people have easy access too.

Also, one point to mention is the cost of healthier foods compared to processed. Not everyone can afford those, that's a huge problem in this country.

I'd definitely be interested to see one of these studies, I'm being serious. I always like to read these and look at the details.

I'm not thinking short vs. long term. Long term controlled studies are virtually impossible. This requires accuracy in self reported data. Self-reported data is inherently fallible.

Are people completely honest with their alcohol consumption? Exercise routines? Do they remember or even know their entire family history? Are they really 100% vegan or vegetarian, or do they cheat but otherwise said there were?

It's impossible to control these inputs long term (decades plus). People have a hard enough time being honest about and/or estimating daily caloric consumption. Never mind over the course of decades.

 

This is what I did 2 years ago. Trashed all my junk food including processed packaged food. Lost 60lbs in just over a year, 2023. 2024 was about maintaining my weight at 175. It’s up to 180 at the moment. We just got back from holiday in Korea. I need to get back down to 170 and even 165 would be ideal for me. Diet Protein shakes in the morning, salads/greens once everyday and regular home cook meal, salmon/fish once a week, chicken and red meat once in a while these days. My issue is beer. Hoppy beers. I really need to cut back.

 

By this logic we can't determine if smoking is bad for you because who the hell is going to be honest enough and stay under observation in a control group long enough to determine this?

 

There are all sorts of ways that tobacco smoke, and other compounds from smokeless tobacco, have been linked to negative health outcomes. You can read dozens and dozens of studies on sites like pubmed.

The issue with studying diet in the same way is that it's not a single variable question. All you can really do is study what happens to various chemical components of various foods as they move through the digestive process (pretty complicated stuff that has proven difficult to generalize from) or look retrospectively at populations based on typical diets or rely on self reporting. In all cases, people's health outcomes are also being influenced by their other lifestyle habits and their genetics.

It sure seems like it makes a lot of sense to eat a wide variety of foods, focusing on whole ingredients and basic preparations over heavily processed foods, and conducting a little self experimentation to see what works best for your body and your lifestyle. We can look at the wide scope of human history and see that no culture has ever opted for a vegan diet, even where it's possible, and the only few groups who have gone fully/largely carnivore have done so because that's all that's available in the climate they live in, and even then all the ones I'm aware of still do consume the limited plant food options when their available.

 

This is a sizable study over a long period of time which lends it considerable credibility. Pescatarians outlive lacto-ovo vegetarians who outlive vegans:

"Analyzing data from 88,400 Seventh-Day Adventist subjects recruited from the U.S. and Canada, the study found that vegetarians overall had approximately 12 percent less risk of dying during the study period (2002-2015) compared to non-vegetarians.

"Participants who followed a pescatarian diet specifically had 18 percent less risk of death, those on a traditional vegetarian diet—excluding meat and fish but including eggs and milk—had 15 less percent risk, and vegans had a less than 3 percent decreased risk of dying during the study period."

https://www.newsweek.com/scientists...d a pescatarian,dying during the study period.

 

I hate to say it but I believe the majority of the problem isn’t cost, but sheer laziness. Most people would much rather eat something convenient, even if they have the time to prepare their own meal. I’ve known so many people (a lot of them retired) who mostly eat TV dinners and supermarket baked goods. They have the money to buy better foods too.

Another example, I know a guy (unfortunately in very poor health, 400lb diabetic) who went on a diet and lost close to 100 pounds but claimed it was too expensive to afford the food. I asked him how much it cost, he said over $100 a week. This was a few years back and the guy was making $34-36 dollars an hour plus overtime. We were working at a remote job and ALL the food was paid for by the company. He had the chance to get whatever foods he wanted but chose junk. He wouldn’t hardly eat salads, in fact, complained about them. We drove 3 hours one way to town once for a supply run and I had to wait 45 minutes, 45 FUCKING MINUTES at the end of the day so he could get one of those 44 ounce slushy things from Sonic. The other times he went into town he’d get himself large barbecue sauce pizzas. Anyway, I haven’t talked to the guy since he left the company. Hope he’s improved himself since then. Really a good guy, just makes some poor decisions but then again who doesn’t?

 

I modify my "almost vegan" diet with up to a lb. of oily fish per month (some months less or none) and use non fat dry milk with added vit. D. I use only EVO, sparingly as possible, and do not fry. I eat only raw, steamed, or boiled vegetables, and try to have a variety on hand so that I have at least seven different kinds daily.. Only whole grains get used as well as long grain brown rice. I snack on air popped popcorn with nothing added, nuts of different varieties, dried fruit. I include as much fresh fruit as possible in diet plan. I try to hit 1700 mg. of sodium per day, but more when I workout more heavily.

There is soooo much data about nutrition to sift through, and after my health crisis I set to the task of it. With the help of my Dr. and this extensive reading I set on the DASH diet, and modified it a bit Especially interesting and important are the new areas of knowledge about our gut microbiome. It may sound silly, but I am in contact with my gut microbiome, we are friends as well as symbionts, and they encourage me to continue proper nutritional behavior, and reward me with continued life and vitality. In the last 2 days this 72 year old man carried 1,140 lbs of rain water in from the water catch, including 470 lbs. up 13 steps 30 lb.s at a time. Give them what they really want and they do great things for us!

 

A healthy gut microbiome is a big factor in overall health. I eat some of Trader Joe's fresh (no vinegar) sauerkraut with garlic and Persian cucumbers every day. It is absolutely delicious and the tastiest I have ever had.

 

I was told that miners always ate the cookie in their packed lunch first, so that if the mine collapsed, they'd have the good stuff in them.

 

Well in that case I’m glad I’m an above-ground miner. All I have to worry about is tipping my loader over

 

One of the great features of sticking to a strict diet is when you go gloriously off of it for the holidays.