Steer Clear of Inferior Beers

Image Credit: leeabbamonte.com

Most of us enjoy a good beer, perhaps too many at times. I came up drinking the usual American suspects and always wondered why folks would tell me I was drinking piss water. This was the default for over a decade although I now prefer a pale ale when I have a choice or try to find a local trustworthy craft brewery. After doing research for this blog, I might have to reconsider my options.

Food Babe is an investigative reporter targeting various industries and publishes public findings on her website foodbabe.com. In 2013, she wrote an excellent report investigating the beer industry shady tactics called The Shocking Ingredients In Beer. The article was enlightening from many aspects however the regulatory body ruling over alcohol ingredients was actually frightening.

Image Credit: foodbabe.com

“Ingredient labeling on food products and non-alcoholic beverages is required by the Food and Drug Administration. But a whole other federal agency regulates beer, and not very well. The Department of Treasury – the same folks who collect your taxes – oversees alcoholic beverages. That probably explains why we know more about what’s in a can of Coke than a can of Bud. You can also thank the alcohol industry, which has lobbied for years against efforts to require ingredient labeling.”

The industry’s primary argument for secrecy is to maintain intellectual property and while that is important, so is what we are putting in our bodies. Most of the ingredients flagged in the above graphic are the lowest cost items available to the industries and potentially the most toxic. It’s easy to see the truth when you follow the money.

She followed up with another report called Clean Beer Choices labelled an active list of preferred beers. This type of journalism is what we so desperately need today and I applaud Food Babe’s efforts to uncover the truth! One word of caution, while German beers do abide by a Purity Law (Reinheitgebot), this might not guarantee level quality one would expect. Some say it merely calls for beer to be only brewed with water, malt and hops (although current regulations might have changed)

“German beer is good because German brewers are highly skilled and make their beer with pride and care. … A crap, money-grubbing commercial brewery will manage to brew bland rubbish either within or without the constraints of the Reinheitsgebot.” forbes.com

A close inspection of German beers finds there may be some truth to the beer purity opinions expressed above. “The Munich Environmental Institute found glyphosate readings between 0.46 and 29.74 micrograms per liter in 14 different popular beers. The highest reading was 300 times the legal limit glyphosate in drinking water in Germany, calling this contamination level, “alarming.”” Source

dw.com

Some say so what, round up is in everything these days. Well, you know that movement about gut bacteria and the importance of the immune system – round up disrupts good bacterial growth. Industry funded studies only investigate the active ingredients preventing the synergistic activity of the inactive ingredients from being exposed.

Unfortunately, it seems difficult to trust anything on the market these days however I do still buy some German brands and this has enabled me to investigate more about the local community. I plan to update this article periodically with new findings including ideas from the comments section. I hope this will help improve our knowledge of the things we are putting in our bodies.

Do any of you have a preferred beer or know of ones we should stay away from?