In Defense of Beer: Non-Alcoholic Beer and Marathon Recovery Story Misleading; Beer With Alcohol Would Work As Well
Twitter and Facebook were abuzz this week with a story on NYTimes.com “Non-alcoholic beer aids marathon recovery.” Cute story that followed up on the positive effects of polyphenols in workout recovery. Problem is, the lead paragraph was pretty misleading, indicating that the beer must be non-alcoholic to have the beneficial effect.
The lead paragraph says, “the beer was effective only if it contained no alcohol.” That’s not what was tested or what was demonstrated. They tested non-alcoholic beer against a similarly flavored placebo. They didn’t test beer containing alcohol, although the lead author of the study indicates that the same substances in non-alcoholic beer that speed recovery are contained in greater quantity in alcoholic beer. He seems to conclude that it would be impossible for a runner to drink two pints a day of alcoholic beer during hard marathon training periods. I have seen examples to the contrary.
“‘Alcoholic beer happens to be drenched in polyphenols, too — even more than nonalcoholic beer,’ Dr. Scherr said — but has the signal disadvantage of being alcoholic. ‘We do not know whether the side effects of alcoholic beer would cancel out the positive effects caused by the polyphenols,’ he wrote. ‘Furthermore, it is not possible to drink one to one and a half liters of alcoholic beer per day, especially not during strenuous training.'” Ummmm… I haven’t tested it, exactly, but that doesn’t seem a tremendous amount of beer. Two pints a day?
To add to this a bit more, a study out of Spain a few years back actually did test beer with alcohol in it. They found: “The rehydration effect in the students who were given beer was ‘slightly better’ than among those given only water.” The study’s author believed: “the carbon dioxide in beer helps quench the thirst more quickly, while beer’s carbohydrates replace calories lost during physical exertion.”
Your thoughts? Ever have a cold beer after a marathon?
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The experiment was as follows: Students in need of hydration, drink Spanish beer, drink as much water as they like.
The active ingredient is not alcohol. Its CO2, and certain types of carb, then lots of water.
NA beer is definitely better for this purpose. The sort of small beer that folks drank in the field in the past centuries in UK was low alc (around 1-2%). It was instead of water (which was of low quality). Not enough alc to get dehydrated on. After my daily exercise, it’d be great to just have beer, and forget about necking H20.
I like strong real ale, but its a bad staple. Choosing a NA or very low alc beer after exercise is definitely the way to go. I like Erdinger and Brewdog Nanny State, for example.
Long live beer and its fantastic variety. NA or lowA are the future though. All types of cancer from gob to arse are to be avoided, and more people are seeing it that way. I’m glad the tech is catching up, with more good ones on the market.
Thanks for the interesting comments, Dave. Agreed that alcohol is not the active ingredient, however, the polyphenols in the first study referenced are the active ingredient (again for the first study, not the Spanish study on hydration) and they are present in larger qualities in the alcoholic variety of beer (which in moderation should not cause health problems).
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