Did science just find weight loss in a bottle of beer? Impossi-brew!

August 30, 2016 Ashley 0 Comments

This just in from science:

Beer might just be the new way to lose weight in the near future.

Or… gain fewer pounds, at least.

And, no, I’m not referring to those low cal beers that help you get less fat as you binge ’em.

(Protip, though: enough of even the healthiest one will make you look opposite of every chick in this picture.)

However, before you get all excited and pop the cap off your umpteenth Bud, lemme ‘splain:

What recent research has shown, is that there is a flavanoid in hops, called xanthohumol, which has apparently proven to reduce the gain of weight. (Well, thus far, in mice – at least). What’s more – it’s also been shown to lower stuff like the bad kind’ve cholesterol, insulin and inflammation indicators, and triglycerides. By how much? Well, in each case, the disparity between the test and control groups of lab mice getting hopped on the hops isolate were significant indeed. Aforementioned bad cholesterol went down by whopping 80%, while insulin levels reduced by 42%. As for reduced weight gain, the difference was 22% less in the treatment group of mice.

So what’s the take away here?

Well, before anyone “hops” to any conclusions, let’s get it straight: first, much more research still needs to be done on this xantho-stuff. Second, we’re not even sure whether these findings can be replicated in human trials or not yet. (That’s kind’ve a biggie.) And third, even if they are, that would mean a concentrated form of the compound would have to be generated to put into a supplement. Not just, ya know, guzzling bubbly stuff. But, once it was all packaged neatly into a pill, the claim’s that it could potentially not only aid with weight management, but also help prevent other afflictions for peeps at risk of stuff like heart disease, diabetes, or stroke. Again though: unfortunately for anybody reading my admittedly clickbaity title (sorry not sorry), this does not mean you’re simply swilling cervezas and getting the benefits straight away. To get enough of the compound, you’d have to put away 3,500 pints in 24 hours.

(No, children. Don’t try this’ne at home.)

But maybe the biggest takeaway here is in the details of the experiment. Though the articles I’ve read all claim that this beer isolate could make you “lose weight”, that’s actually kinda not true. All it’s done thus far is only make peeps with porky proclivities gain less weight as they carry on with their ingestion induced self destruction. See, the mice were being fed a high fat diet all along. They still gained weight – just not as much. Thus, in essence, this was an experiment to see if a supplement would allow you to continue your detrimental diet and ending up a Discovery Health channel oddity quite as quickly as some of your corpulent counterparts eating the same sort’ve junk. Aside from the fact that that’s disgusting (’cause a bad diet doesn’t just effect you on a weight level, but also because it deprives your system of the nutrition you need), weight gain was still an issue: the lab rats still gained weight. So this technically wasn’t even about weight loss. It was more about getting less fat as you’re getting fatter. And even then, the potential health ramifications have my mind racing. I mean, there’s a good reason that bad food makes you fat. That’s how your body’s meant to process it. So what kind’ve long term damage is this stuff doing to your system in order to short circuit your bod’s proper functioning? All in the name of maintaining a still-malignant-on-overall-health vice? Guess we’ll only know when some poor desperate set of test subjects demonstrate it in a lab for us.

Until then, unless it was whisked up by the village witch or Walter White, no brew can cause weight loss.

But if you’re the type who likes to have your keg and drink it too (minus the plus sized duds)…

Peruse this list of low-cal beverages to add to your effervescence repertoire.