Beer : Health and Nutrition

5 The Composition of Beer in Relation to
Nutrition and Health
In Chapter 2 we encountered the changing opinions on the importance of beer as part
of the diet. Seemingly on Captain Cook’s ships beer contributed as many calories to
the sailors’ diets as biscuits (bread) and meat combined (Feeney 1997). Of course this a
priori signi cance of beer is tilted rather differently nowadays; however, beer can still
offer signi cant contributions to the diet, quite apart from its role as a thirst quencher
and substantial contribution to the holistic dining experience.
Norris (1946) and Stringer (1946) contributed some of the earliest and most authoritative
assessments of the worth of beer to the adult diet. These papers were based on
presentations to a joint meeting of the Institute of Brewing and the Nutrition Panel of
the Society of Chemical Industry in December 1945. World War II had just concluded
and Norris observed that:
… there has been great activity on the nutrition front, largely as a result of the
stress of war, and it is not unpro table to examine the position in regard to beer
in the light of recently acquired knowledge of dietary requirements …
Norris (1946)
In the discussion recorded after that meeting, which was held at the historic Horse
Shoe Hotel on Tottenham Court Road, Dr S.K. Kon was moved to offer his opinions,
recorded as follows:
The two papers had underlined the nutritional importance of fermented beverages
for a civilian community in war. He believed it was an open secret that when Dr
Sydenstricker came here from the United States, in 1941, when nutritional problems
were very dif cult, he found much less de ciency disease than was expected, and
there seemed little doubt that the explanation, or part explanation, was the riboavin
and nicotinic acid intake from beer, and possibly from tea. In that way this
country seemed to have solved one or two nutritional problems more satisfactorily
than the otherwise more fortunate USA. But the importance of beer becomes even
greater when the nutrition is considered of the more primitive natives such as those
of Africa. From the studies carried out there recently it would really seem that the
local fermented native beer may be at times almost the sheet anchor of nutrition.