Beer : Health and Nutrition

28 Chapter One
of tolerance, acceptance and savouring. Impacting factors are peer impressions and
adult mimicry. At rst they stand in bars, saying ‘boy, this stuff sure is great’, when in
fact they nd the avour challenging, to say the least. The same pressures lead to the
impression that smoking is mature and socially sophisticated.
There are two possible reactions to such observations. Some would argue that the
response should be to scare young people from the ‘evils’ and educate them so that this
mimicry of adults is seen as futile and ill advised. The converse attitude, particularly
when armed dispassionately with the facts in support of a very real positive impact of
moderate alcohol consumption, is to educate with a more balanced approach. Sure, excessive
consumption of alcohol is stupid, detrimental to health and antisocial. Restrained
consumption, though, can be a boon. Schools in America teach ‘Driver’s Ed’ to develop
good road skills in young people. The person who advocated the banning of the automobile
in response to the numerous instances of speeding, accidents (far from all traceable
to drunkenness) and atmospheric pollution caused by such machinery would be viewed
as eccentric at the very least.
Sutherland and Willner (1998) investigated problems of alcohol, cigarette and illicit
drug use in English adolescents. They found that instances of drug use and smoking
were lowest in those young people who drank beer or wine, was intermediate in those
consuming ‘alcopops’ (nowadays the terms ‘malternative’ is in vogue for this type of
product) and highest in those who drank spirits.
Schweitz (2001) made some very perceptive observations regarding beer drinking in
Sweden. He says that many Swedes have been inculcated with a feeling that even very
modest consumption of beverages of relatively low alcohol content (e.g. most beers) is
morally wrong. He claims that the unjusti ed reaction of shame and guilt in turn leads
to feelings of ‘let’s do something to feel guilty about’, with attendant episodes of binge
drinking. Such drinking patterns of over-indulgence separated by lengthy periods of
abstinence are more prevalent in Sweden than in other countries. Schweitz also says
that the proportionately higher taxation rate (on an alcohol basis) on beer as opposed
to stronger products (wine, spirits) encourages people to consume the higher-alcohol
products.
There is a strong appreciation that the most acute health and social consequences
are most frequently associated with those who indulge in light drinking but then binge
(Poikolainen 1995; Stockwell et al. 1996; Grant & Litvak 1998).
Understandably there is great concern from the medical profession in the face of
the burgeoning evidence for the bene cial impact on the body of moderate alcohol
consumption (which we will address in Chapter 6). To actually recommend that people
drink is considered beyond the ethical pale. As W. Castelli, a principal in the famed
Framingham Heart Study (see Chapter 6), wrote in 1979, ‘With 17 million alcoholics
in this country we perhaps have a message for which this country is not yet ready.’ And