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Alcohol Consumption Slows Your Weight Loss

Alcohol, when consumed into the human body, is converted to carbohydrates--and, just like everything else we eat and drink, should be consumed in moderation. Too much or too little of anything is by and large a bad idea. A regular 12 fluid ounce beer has about 13g of carbs in it, while a light beer of the same portion provides you with about 4.5g of carbs. Contrary to what many people think, alcohols such as gin, rum, vodka, and whisky have hardly any carbs at all.

Now, seeing as how carbohydrates are the body's preferred source of fuel, this should make drinking alcohol good, right? Wrong. Just like refined sugar, alcohol provides us with simple carbs--ones that are easily and quickly passed through our system and generally contain more fat than complex carbs. Other carbs, such as complex carbs, provide us with more fibre, vitamins, and minerals. Neither types are bad for us--actually, both are necessary--we just need many more complex carbs in order to function properly. Simple carbohydrates are not just found in alcohol and sugar; they are present in many types of food. They are contained in milk, and the vitamins and minerals found in milk are nutritionally necessary for a healthy body. The simple carbs in milk are a good thing, where a simple carb like sucrose and alcohol isn't quite as important. Drinking alcohol also generally tends to cause your blood sugar levels to be quite unstable, which can make you feel hungry and crave sweet-tasting food. This can lead to such problems as obesity.

There is some good news for you alcohol-loving, diet-conscious people out there. Lately the major brewers of beer have been producing low-carb beer. Molson, Labatt, Sleeman, and Big Rock, among others, have taken notice of the trendy Atkins diet and have made beer to suit it. Big Rock's Jack Rabbit has one of the lower carbohydrate counts, with only two grams per 355-ml can. Companies claim to preserve the taste of their original brews, but be careful, it may or may not be too good to be true. Nicholas Pashley, author of Notes on my Beermat, declares a deficiency in taste and a watery consistency are often problems with low-carb beers. Even with the potential downfalls of this new beer, they're still an innovative way to watch your weight without cutting out all of life's little pleasures.

Yes, the low-carb revolution has begun. Evidence of such a notion is prevalent. America's top brewers, Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors, have changed their football game ads. No longer boasting bold flavours and gorgeous women, brew companies are raving about their low amount of carbs. It seems that they newest way to enthral young men is to tempt them with abs and buns of steel. Perhaps this is the way to tempt young people into becoming more knowledgeable on their own nutrition practices.

This new found knowledge and popularity of lowering carbohydrate levels in alcohol is making it easier for people everywhere to watch what they are consuming more closely. Awareness of complex and simple carbs is heightened, and that attitude is being reflected in the producers of alcohol. Consumers are realizing that they can't just count calories and fat, but have to factor in other elements like carbohydrates. People are becoming more educated on what is entering their bodies, and hopefully our latest development of becoming overweight and having unhealthy habits will cease to exist, or at least fade a little. The road to complete healthiness is a long and winding one, but steps like watching carb intakes are helping to make progress.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/227735

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Women and Beer - A Story of Love and Fear

"Give me a woman who truly loves beer, and I will conquer the world". This quite warlike sentence, pronounced about a century ago by a quite warlike man: Wilhelm II of Germany, attests beyond any doubt the low affinity of those times between women and a manly drink like beer. But according to historians, things have not always gone this way. From its early beginnings, beer has been produced - and probably also discovered - by women. For ancient Egyptians, beer was a basic food like bread, usually brewed and sold by women. And so at many populations along several centuries: women were the queens of the beer, they invented an great variety of recipes and styles, which now are unfortunately lost.

Beer historian Alan D. Eames dates the decline of beer as household art in late 18th century. Since then the male beer era began, the beer styles were consolidated in the form we know nowadays and women took distance (or were pushed away?) from the beverage they had passionately produced for thousand years. What is the reason of this? Is the men palate so far from women? Probably is not just a matter of taste.

Experiences made on wine tasting suggest that women are better taster than man. This seems to be effective also for beer and other drinks, coffee for example: the best coffee taster in Italy is a woman. We may think that women have refined their senses in the ultra millenarian work of preparing and cooking food. Hence, they are even more prepared than men to catch all the good and the bad hidden into a glass of beer. A quick search on the Internet it is enough to find out that not one, but many women exist that truly love beer. At the HopPress (a beer writers organization hosted by the Ratebeer group) three (out of sixteen) beer expert bloggers are women. One of these, Carla Companion, has written a detailed article on how to introduce to beer your "Relevant Other". Womeninbeer and Womenenjoyingbeer are two sites grouping women beer enthusiast.

In spite of this, international statistics say that women account only between 13 and 25 percent of beer consumption. The situation is drastically different for wine: in this case women overcome men in USA wine market, since they cover at least 60 percent of market consumption and this percentage is not sensibly different worldwide. In UK facts are also more dramatic: only 13 percent of women say to prefer beer over other drinks (40 percent in whole Europe). A survey conducted by the BitterSweet Partneship (an initiative of Molson Core Brewing Company to develop the women beer market) revealed that at least a couple of deep apprehensions keep women far from beer: complain that beer make put on weight and the image of a manly, inelegant drink. On the other hand, wine can benefit of an appealing image: most men would find attractive the image of a woman drinking a cup of deep red wine, but how many of them would think the same of a woman with a beer mug in the hands and foam on the lips?

After decades of advertising targeted on male market, brewing companies begin to understand the potential of women market and the hard work they have to do to develop it. Typical ads with sexy girls serving beer to rough males or working on a shiny car engine do not encourage women to move towards beer. BitterSweet is an example of how things are changing in UK. But it is not only a question of image. Women who drink wine, say they do because they like the flavor, not because it is fashionable. After more than two centuries of men domination in beer brewing industry, beer has probably sadly lost its female side. And now beer breweries are frantically trying to recover, launching on the markets new brands specifically designed for women. Harry's Beer, a pale ale with orange essence, is a good example of these. Only, it does not come from a big brewery: in fact it is been created by a 20 old student at Newcastle University: Harriet Easton, and this is also, maybe, a sign of the times. Difficult to say if designing specific beer styles for women it is the right direction. But surely, taking into account the smoother female taste can only be benefic and help to enrich even more the variegated world of beer styles

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3843990

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If you've ventured down to your local grocery store to peruse the beer section lately, chances are good that you've seen row upon row of bottles gleaming under those fluorescent lights - six-packs, 12-packs, cases and even singles. It's also likely that you saw a predominant number of brown bottles available with a smattering of green and clear bottles tossed in. Why the color range? Why does brown dominate the world of beer bottles?

Once upon a time, beer bottles were mostly green. However, during the 1930s, scientists discovered that sunlight actually caused beer to break down and that brown glass helped to prevent this from happening. Green and clear glass did not do much to protect beer from the ravages of sunlight. Most brewers switched to brown bottles to protect their beer and make sure that it arrived at the stores as fresh as possible.

Of course, some beer makers did not make this move. You will notice that quite a few beers still come in green bottles - Heineken and Molson being two good examples of this. There is a good reason why they have stuck with green even though this glass color does not protect the beer quite as well. After World War II, European brewers found that it was more affordable to use green bottles for their beer. America was suffering from the effects of Prohibition, which reduced the number and quality of American breweries by a significant amount. Because high quality European beers were available in green bottles (and because low-quality American beer came in brown bottles), most drinkers began to equate green bottles with high quality beer. Many brewers use green bottles as a status symbol to this day.

You've probably also noticed that a handful of beers are bottled in clear bottles - Corona, for instance. If a beer has a low percentage of hops used in the brewing process, then sunlight does not affect it in the same way as other beers. Anything with a low hop percentage can be safely bottled in clear glass without much worry about the beer breaking down with exposure to light. That doesn't mean that you should store them on your window shelf though.

That is it in a nut shell. Brown bottles are important for protecting the delicious brew from the ravages of sunlight. Green bottles are more a status symbol than anything else, and clear bottles really don't do much of anything to protect your beer, but can be a sign of a low-hop beer.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6102615

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