What are the nutritional benefits and drawbacks of non alcoholic beer, if the person drinking it isn’t afraid of carbs? it’s a fermented product, so it must have gut benefits.
I’m sorry I only have anecdotal points, but I cut back significantly on alcohol and replaced a lot with Heineken 0. I’m physically feeling better and also not dealing with hangover and general next day agitation that came with drinking.
Benefits: not poisoning yourself with alcohol
= Win
on another note, most if not all fermented products that aren’t refrigerated to stay fresh, have died out, so the fermented content is next to zero. Also several preservation methods also kill most of not all of the microbes you want out of fermentation
As someone that became something of an alcoholic over the pandemic, it’s been helpful to have something to scratch that itch without getting drunk. Plus the ones I drink are only like 70 calories each, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t that bad. If you’re not having problems controlling drinking I’d say you’d probably get more gut benefits from eating yogurt lol.
Maybe just a fun fact, but Japan (with its huge number of old folks) has steadily increasing variety and quality of non-alcoholic beer and booze substitutes. I was unhappy when “gin lime” carbonated drinks (a gin and tonic substitute) was discontinued. I drank so much it it that, despite the lack of alcohol, I probably still harmed my health. The ingredients included quinine, which gave it the authentic tonic water taste.
At the other end of the healthy scale is probably Kirin’s new “Healthy” brand, which is a VERY light pilsner, with a nice foamy head. No alcohol or sugars.
I often drink cheap NA beer and the occasional craft NA, I probably enjoy them more than regular beer at this point. I very much appreciate the sleep help!Effect of non-alcoholic beer containing matured hop bitter acids on mood states in healthy adults: A single-arm pilot study
Effect of non-alcoholic beer on Subjective Sleep Quality in a university stressed population
Many products we enjoy, chocolate, coffee, wine, beer etc start through fermentation but are then pasteurized. So the end product does not contain any gut benefits.
There’s probably no positives to drinking (in terms of physical health) alcohol. Even the antioxidants found in wine can be gained by better non-alcoholic sources.
It’s also important to remember a product like pickles can have zero gut benefits depending on how it was processed. Hint: if you’re getting your pickles from the pantry aisle (non-refrigerated) then you’re not getting any of those benefits
beer, wine, and the like are usually pasteurized to keep them from going boom when a consumer opens them, so they probably aren’t going to contain that much fermented goodness that your body probably doesn’t need.
The only thing that I would say for sure, is that liquid calories are usually “wasted calories” because they don’t satisfy hunger. Since non-alcoholic beer only has around 20kcal/100ml, that drawback is smaller but it is still significant.
Possible benefits in the gutflora might happen too, although I’m not aware of any studies that were able to prove that.
I have a problem where ut is extremely hard for me to vomit. Maybe 6 times in my life I have had the pleasure of that experience…. the worst ever was noro virus, the 2nd worst was drinking non alcoholic beer one night. I was the DD and decided what the heck I will just have a few. Idk why it affected me like that but from then on I would just drink water!
The fermentation product of beer, alcohol, is taken out. So you are what you are drinking is sugar residue + water and the CO2 is probably added later in the process. With as far as my knowledge goes on fermented products the added benefits come from the fact that for example nutrients in sauerkraut, which are not accessible to humans are made accessible. Beer is just sugar turned to alcohol so no interesting benefits.
But enjoy not putting poison in your body haha.