SUMMER’S COMING—HAVE A “HEALTHY” BEER

When I was a teenager my family lived in Japan. We used to ride the train from our Naval base to Tokyo where, since there was no age limitation for alcohol consumption, we would bar hop drinking Kirin, Asahi, Suntory and Sapporo, beers that have all become familiar in the U.S. since that time. I hated beer back then and only drank it to be cool and can actually remember having to choke it down.

It wasn’t until a trip to Scotland decades later that I became a fan.

As it turns out the absolutely delicious beer that hooked me was not the same as the bottled beer I tried in the dark Japanese bars. Draft beer, if it comes straight from the brewery without being pasteurized, is a real, whole, flavorful and surprisingly nutritious food.
On the contrary, commercial beer is nasty stuff and not just because it’s mostly grain carbs (malt and hops). Commercial beer is made with genetically modified grains, which I am not a big fan of and talk more about in my book Death by Supermarket. Commercial beer is also made with tap water, which contains fluoride and chlorine, both toxic to cells. (And fluoride damages the thyroid gland leading to hypothyroidism = obesity.) The final product is then pasteurized (heated at high temperatures) to kill off enzymes so that beer can have a shelf life up to one year. So when you drink supermarket beer you are consuming a dead food that is nothing but water, chemicals, yeast, alcohol and sugar.
“Live” beer is a different animal, literally, as live beer is not pasteurized and contains life-giving enzymes. Enzymes are catalysts necessary for internal chemical reactions, which I also talk more about in DBS. Live beer, available at microbreweries, that usually provide take home jugs, only lasts about three days (at most) before going flat.

You can locate live breweries on www.beertravelers.com. When you drink beer, to modulate all that incoming sugar, it’s always best to eat a high protein, high fat food along with (trying, of course not to pig out as fat and sugar are both energy foods and you will gain weight if you take in more energy than you are currently burning).

Summer is coming. Why not make it a healthier experience than Coors and Bud Lite?

Om Shanti,
Your girlfriend in health,

Be Sociable, Share!

•