Defining the question precisely
From the Herald, apparently original (or at least ahead of the UK)
A study from the United Kingdom has found that a glass of beer contains “significantly less” sugar than a can of Coke, a cappuccino or a glass of cordial.
The Campden BRI Food and Innovation study analysed the calorie content of 52 alcoholic drinks and found that most beers have less than 1 gram of sugar per 100ml.
That is, of course, true. Beer tends to have low sugar because the yeast eats it all. If anyone’s main concern about the health impact of beer consumption is the sugar, they are indeed worrying about the wrong thing.
Beer does have some other sweet-tasting carbohydrates that are digestible by people, though not by yeast. More importantly, though, beer has alcohol, and that’s where most of its energy content comes from.
A discussion of sugar in beer, including detailed numbers, focused on health and whether it “makes you fat”, which fails to mention alcohol or total energy content, doesn’t happen by accident. You’ve got to respect the publicist’s skills.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »