Beer or soft drink. What's healthier

[manticle]

As opposed to the continual 'Any more than sniffing a drink once a month' we get as medical recommendations here.
Not sure we should base much of our social ideals on Russia though. Would be good to find our own place somewhere in the middle and recognise not every individual is the same.
Rather than how much alcohol is consumed, ask how much harm is caused.

 

[wereprawn]

Regarding health issues, I have always wondered how much pesticide ect is on grain. All the "experts" reckon we should wash our fruit and veg to remove it. Must be pretty useless stuff it it simply washes off at the first sign of water.

 

[Eagleburger]

everything is fine in moderation.

 

[Spiesy]

Depends on how you look at it.

Not all soft drink has caffeine or additives, it does not have alcohol, but it is comprised of simple sugars which can lead to teeth rotting, obesity, diabetes etc etc.
Soft drink may not have much nutritional value, but as far as health goes - it doesn't have alcohol.

Beer is still made from sugars, both simple and complex - the percentage of which varies from beer to beer. We know that a lot of this sugar is converted to alcohol, which is generally bad for us, and some of this sugar remains behind - again, the amount of which varies from beer to beer. Beer does have some other goodies like vitamins, minerals and proteins in it though.

Much of a muchness, I guess.

I doubt too much Coca Cola or Russian Imperial Stouts are overly good for anyone though.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

Russian Imperial Stouts are good for everyone. I suggest that one could live off it, unlike coca corn sugar & phosphoric acid drink.

 

[DJ_L3ThAL]

Russian Imperial Stouts are good for everyone. I suggest that one could live off it, unlike coca corn sugar & phosphoric acid drink.

You make cordial with your Starsan, mate that's committed...

 

[philmud]

I rarely tough soft drinks (drink loads of soda water ) after reading an article about the immediate impact on your body. This infographic covers it. This stuff isn't even really ok in moderation because the amount of sugar in a single can is a real shock to your system. I'm sure beer these days is pretty ordinary from a nutritional standpoint, but I wonder if a single serving is quite as rough on your guts.

 

[Midnight Brew]

From a PH viewpoint, beer is healthier at around 4-4.5ph where as soft drink is around 2 and battery acid is 1.

 

[klangers]

If we're looking at a purely weight gain perspective, beer will make you fatter kJ for kJ compared with soft drink as beer contains maltose which has a far higher GI than glucose.

However, if we compare beer to soft drink made in the states which uses high fructose corn syrup (unlike our nice sugar cane here in AU) then I'm sure it evens out.

That said, beer contains nothing inherently bad for you, unlike soft drink. I used to work for coke - the drums of concentrate have material safety data sheets that advise breathing apparatus and gloves when handling. Although diluted in the drink, coke contains a hellava lot of nasty acids such as phosphoric acid. Not to mention all the other mystery compounds...

Some research articles have shown that beer in moderation can be good for your heart. Soft drink has zero health benefits for any amounts of consumption.

 

[Dave70]

Ethanol has a lethal dose threshold, around .50% EBAC. So assuming you could get enough beer in your guts and absorb it into your bloodstream, it's no contest as to which is less harmful.
On the flip side, a glass a two a day has been shown beneficial.

Plus, you're unlikely to tuck into a session with the Fanta and consume 3 or four liters in a night. A nice quaffable pale ale? Its a doddle.

All I know is I hate soft drink. Makes my eyelids feel they're sticking to my corneas after I drink it.

 

[QldKev]

I'd say softdrinks are better, as you tend to only have one.

 

[TimT]

What gets me is all the folks wandering around these days with the energy drinks. Basically sweetened fizzy drinks of tea. Wouldn't get much nutritional benefit out of them, I would have thought.

 

[TheWiggman]

Interesting fact - flavoured milk contains more sugar than soft drink.

Here's an article loosely related to the subject - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12355333
It seems to cover energy only, and human behaviour and consumption during a meal. Wine was found to have the worst effect, but this is a behavioural study. Beer and soft drink aren't statistically significantly different.

On one hand the beverage contains a drug, on the other it contains high levels of simple sugars. It's falacy that low carb beer is much better for you because while the beer might have fewer carbohydrates, it still contains alcohol. The alcohol itself contains energy which your body must either use, pass, or store.
Soft drink contains sugar (I don't personally differentiate between the hugh fructose and cane sugar regardless of what 'The Bitter Truth' asserts) which is energy. A quick scout on the internet shows that from a kJ point of view both beer and soft drink appear to contain almost identical levels of energy.

I think the more prevalent question is what type of energy source is better for your body - simple sugars or alcohol? Any doctors or nutritionists out there? Oddly there doesn't seem to be any specific info on ye olde Google.

I prefer to balance my diet by not having any soft drink and thus illogically allowing extra intake for beer.

 

[TimT]

Speaking about energy sources, the other night on going to bed I found I had a rather restless time of it - lots of tossing and turning. At first I thought it was the four cups of coffee I'd had during the day but - I've had that many before with no discernible effect on my sleeping patterns.

It might have been the wheat beer I had the night before - I'd flavoured it with lemon peel and Iceland Moss (it's a traditional type of food for soups and medicinal drinks). No hops. Maybe the Iceland Moss had a stimulant effect?

It's weird drinking non-hopped ales when all you're used to hopped varieties of the same. When I drink an ordinary hopped beer, I notice a calming wave of sleepiness rolling through my body., due to the sedative effects of the hops. When you drink a non-hopped ale, this usually doesn't happen. It can be quite surprising. It's like the headspin you get when you put your foot on an escalator that isn't moving - as if your body has adjusted itself, through long experience, to a particular effect.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/alcohol.

An article on the effects of alcohol on our bodies in regards to cancer, I think the soft drink would be as bad as obesity is another cancer cause as well as causing coronary ailments.

 

[klangers]

Food and beverage products are analysed for energy content through a calorimeter which essentially burns the substance and assesses the amount of energy liberated (once the ingredients are analysed then it's a matter of simply adding them together). This is obviously not how our bodies digest. This means that things like alcohol, which has a huge energy of combustion, actually have little to no accessible energy for the body. It simply cannot be broken down in an exothermic way by the body and in fact gets turned to ethyl ethanoate (incidentally a form of biodiesel) and other compounds by the liver.

Alcohol in itself has a GI of 0; it does not yield any useful energy for the body.

 

[Dave70]

Speaking about energy sources, the other night on going to bed I found I had a rather restless time of it - lots of tossing and turning. At first I thought it was the four cups of coffee I'd had during the day but - I've had that many before with no discernible effect on my sleeping patterns.

It might have been the wheat beer I had the night before - I'd flavoured it with lemon peel and Iceland Moss (it's a traditional type of food for soups and medicinal drinks). No hops. Maybe the Iceland Moss had a stimulant effect?

It's weird drinking non-hopped ales when all you're used to hopped varieties of the same. When I drink an ordinary hopped beer, I notice a calming wave of sleepiness rolling through my body., due to the sedative effects of the hops. When you drink a non-hopped ale, this usually doesn't happen. It can be quite surprising. It's like the headspin you get when you put your foot on an escalator that isn't moving - as if your body has adjusted itself, through long experience, to a particular effect.

There is some merit to the hop / sleep thing. I thought it was just a myth like the whole Valerian root scam. Hop extract, mind you. In desperation one evening, I produced a 'tea' from some old Chinook hops. I couldn't get it down. The gag reflex won. It threatened to turn my face inside out.
I'm currently taking Melatonin to help with the no sleep blues. Works well, but not to well - ie - you don't wake up feeling like a Haitian zombie.


*merit*
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22849837

 

[TheBlackAdder]

...Alcohol in itself has a GI of 0; it does not yield any useful energy for the body.

I know the calorimeter is used to figure out calories and its flaws but I didnt know alcohol has a 0 GI.

It really shows how over-simplified the calories that get published are.

Would this mean in terms of energy that beer is relatively low and a health drink? (ignoring alcohol's affect on the body)

 

[klangers]

Nah the kJ count of beer - ignoring the alcohol - is still very high. This is mainly due to the unfermented sugars and proteins.

Dry wine, interestingly enough, is quite low in kJ.

 

[TheWiggman]

Nah the kJ count of beer - ignoring the alcohol - is still very high. This is mainly due to the unfermented sugars and proteins.

Interesting. My amateur [brewing] mind would look at the SG of a beer and imply that extra 'stuff' put in contributes to the SG, mainly sugars. That implies to me that a low SG would have less sugar remaining, and hence would contain less energy that a person might convert to their spare tyre. Is this correct?

I've also heard (and I hear a lot of things) that it's the presence of alcohol that contributes to weight gain. By what mechanism, I'm not sure. My wife's gym instructer said something about how it tricks the body to storing things as fats. Hard to know what to believe.