Beer : Health and Nutrition

104 Chapter Five
fuel by the liver (Mitchell & Herlong 1986). Gibney et al. (1989) suggest that there
is an inverse relationship between energy derived from alcohol and that from dietary
fat. On the other hand, Le Marchand et al. (1989) claim that abstainers consume more
vitamins, calcium, fruit and raw vegetables, while drinkers took in more fat (especially
polyunsaturates), meat, pickled vegetables and dried sh. It appears as if alcohol is
causing a higher metabolic rate (Klesges et al. 1994; Orozco & de Castro 1994) perhaps
with an increased burning up of fats (Suter et al. 1992). Rumpler (1994) from the
USDA Human Nutrition Research Center claimed that consuming moderate amounts
of alcohol did not cause weight gain or an excess of body fat. He suggested that alcohol
may help the body to regulate appetite.
People who consume alcohol but who are not alcoholics appear to add the energy from
alcohol to their normal energy intake rather than replace food with alcohol (Jones et al.
1982). That this increased energy intake does not necessarily translate into body mass
may be because alcohol stimulates the basic metabolic rate (MacDonald et al. 1993).
So it does not appear that additional calories from alcohol are compensated for by a
reduction in calorie intake from other foods (Westerterp-Plantenga & Verwegen 1999).
In contrast, pre-dinner drinks in which carbohydrate, protein or fat was the prime energy
source led to a reduction in the amount of food eaten during the meal. Richter (1926)
and Eriksson (1969), however, presented evidence to suggest that voluntary alcohol
intake depresses food consumption in proportion to its energy content. Forsander (1988)
showed that ethanol suppresses the consumption of carbohydrate but not fat or protein.
There have been various reports that a high carbohydrate/low protein food depresses
voluntary alcohol intake, while a low carbohydrate/high protein diet increase it (Hauser
& Iber 1989). Candy is recommended to those with a predilection to consume alcohol
to excess (Biery et al. 1991). Istvan et al. (1995) says that those who drink regularly,
but each time in relatively small amounts, have lower body weights than those who
drink a lot at once or don’t drink at all.
Direct studies in which alcohol was ‘control fed’ to humans showed that, under normal
living conditions, moderate alcohol consumption (e.g. 60–75 g alcohol per day, which is
equivalent to approximately 2 litres of average strength beer daily) had no measurable
impact on energy balance and body weight over a period of approximately one month
(MacDonald et al. 1993).
Another index of body mass (perhaps of most interest to women) is waist : hip ratio
(WHR). Just as for BMI, it has variously been concluded that alcohol lowers (Kaye et
al. 1990), raises (Lapidus et al. 1989) or has no effect (Haffner et al. 1986) on WHR.
In a recent investigation, Buemann et al. (2002) measured the amount of food consumed
by subjects given beer, wine or a carbonated soft drink with the meal. When
people were given a designated quantity of each drink there was no signi cant difference
between any of the beverages in respect of impact on the amount of food consumed.
However, when they were given less of the drink and allowed to consume the whole