Can you really blame beer for your Beer Belly? I know a lot of people have this misconception about some foods which they think adds fat around your belly.
But then is this really true, more so in the case of drinking Beer?
Although drinking beer can contribute to your overall fitness if you are a heavy drinker, scientists believe that drinking beer is not the main reason that you have “beer belly”.
As part of the study, a team from Germany and Sweden analyzed the weight as well as the hip and waist measurements of nearly 20,000 people over four years.
- Participants were asked to detail how much beer they drank and what else they consumed each day.
- A beer belly was defined as one that bulges distinctly around the waist and was proportionally large in comparison to hip measurement and body size.
- The beer consumption of the participants was categorized from “very light” to “heavy”.
“Beer Consumption and the ‘Beer Belly’: Scientific Basis or Common Belief?” M. Schutze, M. Schulz, A. Steffen, M.M. Bergmann, A. Kroke, L. Lissner, and H. Boeing, European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 63, no. 9, September 2009, pp. 1143–9. The scientists/authors in the study were from the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke in Nuthetal, Germany, at Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Fulda, Germany, and at University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden. report
Post their studies, the researchers concluded that their study does not support the common belief of a side-effect of beer on the abdomen. As per this report, the team concluded that beer consumption did lead to a rise in waist size, but it was closely related to overall weight gain in both men and women.
An earlier study published in 2003 in the Czech Republic, in the same medical journal, had concluded that drinking beer by itself does not cause much change in weight. However, the scientists involved in the German study believe that Czech research was flawed.
So drinking beer is definitely not the real cause of beer belly although lots of beer consumption can be associated with an increase in overall body fatness, they observed.
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