Grrrrrrrrrrrr... the title of the web site is a play on words of the popular scare presentation 'Sugar - The Bitter Truth', which in itself is a whole other conversation. Sugar in the '00-10s is what fats were in the '80s and '90s. FRUCTOSE is the evil, deadly, family-killing poison that self-proclaimed health experts and 'informed' TV personalities are fighting against these days. There are some valid reasons for this but fundamentally if you have too much, you will get fat. Much like anything.
If it's stamped on the side of the bottle it has to comply with
Food Standards Australia, so I don't think we can question whether that's false. Obviously different beers will have different amounts of unfermented or unfermentable sugars, but in general yes they are low in sugar as governing bodies and scientists define sugar.
What gets my goat is the implication now that because everyone is scared of sugar, anything that is low sugar is good. The corporations react and either advertise that their product is low in sugar (and therefore healthy) or change the product so that it contains less sugar (and therefore healthy). I find it insulting as a consumer. Are we all that naive that we don't actually know what's in our foods and what's good and bad for us, and thus when we get overweight it is naturally due to the evil corporations cramming nasty weight-gaining pollutants into our foods? Well I suppose based on stats we are. Though if you ask me, it's not fructose/fat/grains/GMO that's the problem, it's how much of it we are eating and the amount of physical activity we are doing.
Some of my in-laws are on a sugar free diet at the moment. Literally, they are stating they are on "sugar free". I asked MIL how she goes to make up for the goodness in fruit and she said "no we can eat fruit". I then questioned whether she's aware fruit is very high in sugar, and after disagreeing she baulked (realising she didn't know what she was on about), then FIL says "no it's natural sugar". Of course I rebutted saying that natural or not, it is sugar, and therefore the diet is not sugar free. Suddenly it was processed sugar-free diet. Much like a red-meat vegetarian diet. Moral of the story was that she cut cakes and soft drinks - both of which she used to indulge in - and suddenly due to the miracle of Sarah Wilson's brilliance she was losing weight! She is also walking regularly but that has nothing to do with it.
Another in-law publicly announces they are off sugar and the rhetoric is the same. In reality, she used to eat too much of the wrong things (read: cake, juice, chips, soft drink) and now she isn't. She wasn't managing her diet and now she is. Would you believe, she's losing weight. I skimmed over a page on the book about alcohol and it stated that beer was acceptable as the fructose is mainly broken down by the yeast. It warned against sticky wines because these are super high in sugar - avoid! Telling people not to drink a late season botrytis semillion because it contains sugar is idiotic. It's in a completely different class to soft drink, it's an after dinner sipper and consumed because it tastes beautiful and compliments a dessert. A pleasure in life.
Apart from the marketing bullshit my issue with this is that now as a consumer that doesn't have a weight problem when I want to have something nice I am faced with artificially flavoured crap. What did contain fat moved flavour to sugar. Sugar is now being replaced by artificial sweeteners and the result is watered down, bland, and artificial tasting crap. I haven't had a decent supermarket shelf yoghurt in years. I won't touch diet soft drinks. Big M's clearly taste like low fat milk, so while lacking in flavour they're still high in sugar making them high energy anyway.
I DRINK AND EAT TRASH FOOD BECAUSE I LIKE THE TASTE. I just don't drink or eat a lot of it because it's not good for me. But when I do, I enjoy it. Much like beer.
I think there is no beautiful truth behind beer because while it does have some health benefits it contains alcohol. You can't suddenly wipe the health implications clean because it's low in sugar, some are very low in carbs, and because suddenly everyone who considers themselves 'informed' believes that fructose is the next Hitler. Nothing has changed! AAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!
Where's the rant thread?