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CASTLE MALTING NEWS in partnership with www.e-malt.com Danish
10 May, 2006



Brewing news Belgium: Beer against deposits of stomach fat

Professor Arne Astrup (Copenhagen, Denmark): “Moderate beer consumption protects against a beer belly” he said, referring to the framework of the Beer and Health symposium in Brussels on 4 May 2006.

Arne Astrup is head of the ‘Department of Human Nutrition’ at the Danish University in Frederiksberg and is also nutritional adviser in Copenhagen university hospital. He conducts research into the causes of obesity. Astrup was a guest at the Beer and Health symposium in Brussels on 4 May 2006.

Cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of death in the West. Dealing with the risk factors for cadiovascular diseases is therefore a priority. One of the risk factors is a bulging stomach. Deposits of fat around the hips and thighs may not be particularly aesthetic, but they are not unhealthy either. The fat lies just below the skin. Stomach fat, however, is dangerous. In a fat stomach much of the fat is packed behind the stomach muscles and it is precisely that ‘inner stomach fat’ that is a major risk factor in cardiovascular diseases.

When a man’s waist measures more than 102 centimetres, or if a woman’s waist measures more than 88 centimetres, the risk of heart problems, such as for instance heart attack, increases significantly.

In common parlance a protruberant stomach is still referred to as a beer belly, although beer drinkers, provided that they drink in moderation, are in fact less at risk of developing a beer belly. Recent research indicates as much. The causes for deposits of stomach fat must be sought elsewhere: in smoking, in lack of physical exercise and in unhealthy eating habits. Astrup: “It would be more correct to speak of a smoker’s belly rather than a beer belly.”

Moderate drinkers who drink one to seven glasses a week are 40 to 70 percent less at risk of heart problems than are total abstainers.

Professor Astrup: ‘A moderate beer consumption increases the concentration of good cholesterol (HDL) in the blood, this also reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease. But there is more. We now know that moderate beer consumption also protects against the so-called beer belly. It is high time the message went out and the use of words was corrected. The beer belly is not only a myth, it is actually a contradictio in adjecto!”

Professor Astrup maintains that beer is better than wine against a big belly. “Why that is has not yet been scientifically explained. Probably because wine contains more calories than beer does. And also, so the demographic research suggests, because wine-drinkers eat a dessert more often than beer-drinkers do.”





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