Tag: beer bellies

Drink yourself thin

It’s Thursday, and if you don’t have happy hour plans, now is the time to change that. But don’t waste your happy hour socializing, have a goal. How about you try to drink like a Czech? Because as it turns out, the Czechs are mere mortals after all.

A study has found that people in the Czech Republic, the biggest beer drinking country in the world, have the same size bellies as any other human. There’s nothing special to their abilities, aside from probably being able to rally quickly after heaving to.

Doctors measured weight, waist to hip ratio (WHR), and body mass index (BMI). In men the beer intake was weakly associated with WHR, although only among nonsmokers. Beer intake had no relationship to BMI. In women, there was no relationship at all between beer consumption and WHR, and a weak inverse association with BMI. (Inverse association is science-ese that means BMI was lower among drinkers.) Conclusion: It is unlikely that beer drinking has anything to do with obesity.

You have your homework, America. Get to it, and don’t worry about getting fat!

Beer bellies-a thing of the past

Oh science, how I love you!

From the UK comes excellent news for beer drinkers — and their bellies: According to the results of a new study, beer bellies are caused by genetics, not beer.

After tracking 7,876 men and 12,749 women over the course of eight and a half years, a group of German and Swedish researchers discovered that while regular drinkers — especially those who consumed the equivalent of two pints a day — were more likely to gain weight overall, that weight did not necessarily accumulate in the abdominal region. The scientists concluded that while “beer consumption seems to be rather associated with an increase in overall body fatness,” evidence of more “site-specific” weight gain was limited. Somewhat unsurprisingly, given its pivotal role in most weighty matters, genetics was the real culprit.

The news couldn’t have come at a better time, i.e summer, when hot days call out for cold brews and beer aficionados seek sweet relief in air-conditioned bars across the country.