91色情片

SHE鈥橲 SEXY. She鈥檚 smiling. She鈥檚 coming your way. And then she leans forward,
peers at your beer belly and purrs: 鈥淚 like men. I just hate their guts.鈥�

Men in Britain have been getting this message a lot lately. The temptress is
a pouty Budweiser model who peers from bus posters and magazine pages鈥攁nd
she has plenty to say. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 chase men who can鈥檛 run away,鈥� teases one ad.
鈥淢en who neglect themselves will never have a body like mine,鈥� taunts another.
These slights are all part of Budweiser鈥檚 campaign to make British men fret
about their beer bellies鈥攁nd reach for a 100-kilocalorie Bud Light, a brew
newly available in Britain.

If you live in the US, don鈥檛 laugh. Light beers鈥攚hich are lower in
calories than most regular beers鈥攁lready make up about 40 per cent of the
American beer market and are gaining ground in Australia and mainland Europe.
Industry marketers pin the trend on a growing desire to live healthier, thinner
lives. But will avoiding your regular pint or two of full-strength beer really
portend a sleeker, sexier you? As it turns out, the answer is as murky as the
dregs at the bottom of a keg.

To be sure, pure alcohol packs calories: about 7 kilocalories (kcal) per
gram, compared with 9 kcal for fat and 4 kcal for carbohydrates and protein. A
pint of beer holds about 170 kcal鈥攋ust shy of the amount in a packet of
crisps鈥攚hile a glass of red wine or port contains roughly 90 kcal. These
liquid calories鈥攚hich include sugars or fats to sweeten the sip鈥攁dd
up. It would make sense, then, if regular drinkers have been found to weigh more
than teetotallers.

Except they haven鈥檛.

True, the beer belly exists, but it鈥檚 wrongly named. It鈥檚 just fat carried
where men carry it best鈥攁round the mid-section. And true, one study has
found that people who gulp down more than six non-wine (in this study, mostly
beer) alcoholic drinks per week have significantly higher waist-to-hip ratios
than people sipping wine with the same volume of alcohol, a finding that is
usually put down to lifestyle differences between beer and wine drinkers. But
when you compare drinkers with non-drinkers, the vast majority of
epidemiological studies show that moderate drinkers weigh the same鈥攐r even
less鈥攖han those who abstain.

In the most widely cited study, published in 1991, Harvard University
epidemiologist Graham Colditz and his colleagues scrutinised alcohol intake and
weight change in 138 000 men and women. The data had been collected by
questionnaire since 1980 as part of two ongoing studies鈥攖he Nurses 91色情片
Study and the 91色情片 Professionals Follow-up Study鈥攄esigned to find out
how lifestyle affects health in the long-term. It showed that men who drank
moderate amounts of wine or beer gained no more weight over the years than men
who did not. Women who similarly indulged actually appeared to suffer less
middle-aged spread, with a body mass index about 15 per cent lower than
non-drinkers. Similarly, a 1993 British health survey found that moderate female
drinkers were about half as likely to be obese as non-drinkers. Several
short-term diet studies have echoed these findings: people who temporarily added
alcohol to their diets usually lost pounds.

鈥淚t comes as a shock, doesn鈥檛 it, to see that people who drink more don鈥檛
weigh more?鈥� marvels John Crouse, a medical researcher at Wake Forest University
in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and author of one alcohol study. 鈥淪ome people
would say that鈥檚 a great stroke of luck.鈥� Luck it might be, but finding a good
explanation for what has come to be known as the alcohol paradox has had
researchers stumped for decades.

One wistful theory was that the calories in alcohol just didn鈥檛 count. After
all, several studies show that people who drink secrete less insulin, a hormone
that promotes the synthesis and storage of fat. But a 1996 study put paid to the
idea that alcohol calories are somehow different to regular calories.

For four months, 48 volunteers consumed the same number of calories each day,
with one half receiving five per cent as ethanol in a grape-flavoured drink, and
the other half receiving the same proportion as a carbohydrate powder dissolved
in the same drink.

Each volunteer spent two months on the alcohol diet and another two on the
carbohydrate diet. At the end of these periods, each person spent 24 hours
working, eating, sleeping and just hanging out in a whole-body
calorimeter鈥攁 room rigged with equipment to monitor everything that goes
into a person (food, liquids, air) and everything that comes out (faeces, urine
and respiratory gases). On average, the same number of calories were burnt by
each person, and the same number were stored as fat, regardless of whether they
had consumed alcohol, says research physiologist William Rumpler of the US
Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland, who ran the study. His
disappointing conclusion: a calorie is just a calorie, even when it鈥檚 lolling
inside a good Cabernet.

Rumpler鈥檚 studies did confirm that the body deals with alcohol unusually
quickly. That makes sense since alcohol is treated by the body as a poison, and
liver enzymes immediately convert it into the more benign acetate. But this
really just amounts to normal metabolism on fast-forward, Rumpler says, and it
doesn鈥檛 magic away calories.

Another hypothesis for why alcohol may not wreck your waistline is that
drinkers cut back on their food鈥攃onsciously or subconsciously鈥攊n an
attempt to compensate for the liquid calories. 鈥淭he whole mystery may come down
to the fact that people in epidemiology studies don鈥檛 report their alcohol and
food intake accurately,鈥� says William Lands, a senior adviser at the National
Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism near Washington, DC. Notwithstanding
the current epidemic of Western obesity, humans and other animals are remarkably
adept at regulating their calorie intake. 鈥淚f you eat more and more mashed
potatoes, you eat less and less of other foods,鈥� says Lands. 鈥淲hat happens when
you drink more and more alcohol? We really don鈥檛 know.鈥�

Rumpler, for one, hopes to find out. His lab plans to launch a study in
February that will provide people with all their food for four months. Halfway
into the study, the researchers will add alcohol to the participants鈥�
diets鈥攁nd then check to see if they cut back on food, and if so which
foods and how much. 鈥淗opefully, we can solve this paradox once and for all,鈥�
Rumpler says.

If researchers do discover that people atone for alcohol calories by eating
less, it probably won鈥檛 be happening during the actual headiness of
intoxication. That lowers inhibitions鈥攊ncluding any resolve to nibble
sparingly, according to a study published in February in The American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition. In that study, biologists Margriet Westerterp-Plantenga and
Christianne Verwegen of Maastricht University in the Netherlands served 52
people alcohol (wine or beer), fruit juice or water 30 minutes before lunch once
a week for five weeks. The diners were then given a scientific salad
lunch鈥攁 plate piled with precise amounts of cold pasta, beans, ham and
other foods. A weighing scale resting under the plate鈥攁nd a hidden
observer counting every bite chewed鈥攄etermined how much of the lunch each
volunteer consumed. Those who knocked back alcohol beforehand ate more food, ate
more quickly, and took longer over lunch than their peers.

Which leaves at least one more plausible explanation for why drinkers tend to
be slimmer than non-drinkers: perhaps they are just more svelte to begin with.
Overweight women鈥攖hose at least 4.5 kilograms heavier than the recommended
weight鈥攎ay pile on the pounds as a result of drinking, while thin women
don鈥檛, according to a 1995 study by nutrition researcher Beverly Clevidence at
the US Department of Agriculture. On the surface, that finding seems to
contradict the diet studies which mostly suggest that temporarily downing
alcohol makes you lose weight. But dig deeper, and all becomes clear. Although
the earlier studies found that on average people lose weight when they drink,
the few obese volunteers in the studies actually gained weight.

Why might heavier drinkers be at a disadvantage? One idea is that alcohol
affects insulin levels differently in thin and obese people. On average, people
who drink alcohol secrete less insulin. But at least one study has found no such
effect in obese women, says physiologist Loren Cordain of Colorado State
University in Fort Collins. Researchers don鈥檛 know why.

In fact, Cordain adds, until scientists understand far more about alcohol
metabolism, you might as well enjoy whatever beer you prefer鈥攊n
moderation. 鈥淪hort of overdoing it, you can drink anything you please, even if
it鈥檚 light beer,鈥� he says.

Whether your brew will attract a Bud Light girl is another thing
altogether.

• Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda-water the
  day after Lord Byron (1788-1824)
• Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely
  negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
• I always keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake鈥攚hich I
  also keep handy W. C. Fields (1880-1946)
• Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy
  Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
• When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading
  Henny Youngman (1906-1998) British-born American comedian
• Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero
  must drink brandy Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
• It takes one drink to get me drunk, but I can鈥檛 remember if it鈥檚 the
  thirteenth or the fourteenth George Burns (1896-1996)
• An alcoholic is someone you don鈥檛 like who drinks as much as you do
  Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)