From Beer Guts to Cooked Vegan Bones

All the latest nutrition news that you didn't know you needed

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You’ve heard of the gut-brain axis. But have you heard of the gut-beer axis?

It really is a thing. And why not, when all things fermented are today’s essential components of every food fashionista’s diet. From kombucha to kimchi, yogurt to sauerkraut, fermentation enhances the friendly bacteria population of the gut. That puts beer at the top of the superfoods chain: you can virtually watch it fermenting as it fizzes in your glass.

An article published in July’s Frontiers in Nutrition is an unashamed eulogy to beer. This mini review of the research catalogues the impressive nutrients found in this ancient beverage: many amino acids (though not clear which), trace elements, calcium, magnesium, zinc, copper, selenium, iron, and polyphenols and flavonoids. And when the whole shooting match is metabolised and consumed, its benefits include anti-inflammatory, pro-immunity, anti-cancer, anti-coagulant, and antioxidant activity.

As the article progresses, so too does the authors’ confidence in their subject matter, boldly stating that “Moderate consumption of beer helps in preventing arteriosclerosis and heart disease, inhibits cancer, and improves blood circulation and immune function. Beer has also been shown to have antioxidant and anti-aging effects, promote estrogen production, reduce radiation damage, and help prevent cardiovascular events.”

I know of nothing that compares to that. Beer’s healing properties border on the divine.

But back to beer guts. This, we learn, is how it works: when beer is fermented, the gut microbiome gets to work and creates metabolites that favour the growth of beneficial bacteria, “creating a virtuous cycle”.

If all that sounds too good to be true, and I did smell a beer mat, that’s because after scrolling down to the end of the article – a good habit to get into when reading any paper that promotes a particular food or drink – I discovered that funding for the study came from something called the Open Research Fund of State Key Laboratory of Biological Fermentation Engineering of Beer, and that two of the authors of the study were employees of Tsingtao Brewery Co. Ltd.

It is well known in science that industry-sponsored research usually yields positive results. Ironically, it is a well-researched phenomenon, with trials resulting in as much as 85% positivity rate. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater: the gut microbiome does play a massive role in regulating the health of the whole body, including the brain. The gut-brain axis is not a figment of industry sponsorship.

To the list of neurological conditions that may have their origins in the gut, we can now add Parkinson’s disease. Researchers have discovered that the first signs of the disease appear in the gut, many years before signs appear in the brain.

Like so much in research, this is not as ground breaking as it appears. Twenty years ago, the “gut-first theory of Parkinson’s” emerged with the discovery of damaged, or “misfolded” proteins that cause the immune system to launch an attack on neurons in the gut. Those gut neurons are also found in the brain. (weird, I know.)

It happens in mice. The researchers found that an immune attack on neurons in the gut produced constipation and other gut problems of the type found in most people with Parkinson’s years before they develop the disease. The next stage of the research is to discover how to stop the immune response in the gut before it reaches the brain.

Paying attention to the health of the gut in earlier life may be the key to preventing Parkinson’s. I’m not sure if that includes drinking lots of beer.

It definitely doesn’t include eating ultra-processed, “plant-based” alternatives to meat. That’s more likely to have the opposite effect: ultra-processed foods change the composition of the gut microbiome and can cause intestinal inflammation, and all the damage that comes with it.

In late July, a research paper published in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health warned that the media focus on environmental issues, and its enthusiasm for plant-based “solutions” (aka financial opportunities), overlook the impact of “heavy industrial processing” on human health. The finished product is usually devoid of nutrients but high in sugar, industrial fats and artificial additives.

These products won’t save the planet, or human health. I would argue that they contribute to the demise of both. So you’ll have to pardon my schadenfreude when I discover that the fake meat companies are not doing so well. Beyond Meat sales have fallen by almost a third, and many other companies have gone bust.

Even so, efforts are still being made to create ever more ludicrous but edible fake foods, for which there is no consumer demand whatsoever.

Enter “plant-based pork ribs.” That’s right – fake meat attached to fake, edible vegan bones. At first I thought - with some alarm - that the bones of vegans were being exploited as a potential source of nutrition, but then realised how implausible that was. On further investigation, I discovered that a company called Juicy Marbles has created this latest monstrosity, due to go on sale in the UK, EU and US at the end of August. We don’t know what the price will be, except that it will be higher than the cost of real pork ribs, which, Juicy Marbles adds sniffily, “are generally a cheap meat product.” Unlike the soya that is used to make the fake ribs.

I get the feeling that the environment/climate crisis is being used as a stick with which to beat us into submission so that we eat the foods we don’t actually want to eat.

That feeling was confirmed by the publication of a study in the journal Appetite in August, that helpfully explains, to anyone with a vested interested, how to “encourage willingness” in the general population to start eating insects.

As if childhood force-feeding of greens, cod liver oil and all the rest wasn’t bad enough, you may now be forced to relive so much long-buried trauma, this time with locusts, maggots and crickets.

The practice of eating insects is called entomophagy. Apparently, “Western society is often inclined to reject this practice based on initial reactions of disgust”. You got that right. This time, the parents have been replaced by the scientists.

When I say scientists, I mean people who work in the psychology and marketing department of Reading University in the UK.

These people suggest a “utility-value intervention”. What this marketing speech means is creating a way to make insect-eating attractive and desirable. To that end, they carried out a couple of trials on 280 volunteers. These volunteers had to research and write a short essay on “the factors that are important for a healthy and environmentally sustainable diet.” The results of this educational strategy were apparently positive: they reported that it increased their willingness and curiosity to eat insects. Or perhaps to just make it all go away.

When I say volunteers, I’m guessing impoverished students. For their time and trouble they were paid just £5 ($6.3).

Eating locusts and crickets is okay for prophets wandering in the wilderness wearing nothing but sack cloth, but not something most of us would willingly choose. The only way we might possibly be persuaded – other than a cash incentive amounting to a lot more than £5 - is to heavily disguise the insects, so that any trace of their origins is completely obliterated.

And that is exactly what the manufacturers are doing. They are creating ultra-processed insect snacks, camouflaged with cricket flour and the usual additives and flavourings, all fried in processed seed oil. The finished product is yet another crispy, crunchy snack of indeterminate origin, bagged up and ready to go on sale. See Amazon for lots of variations on this ultra-processed theme.

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August is often called the silly season, when everyone’s on holiday and stories of the Loch Ness Monster make the front pages. But when it comes to food and nutrition news, every month is as silly as the last.