Scientists in Germany recently published findings from a study that fraternity houses have been informally conducting for generations.
They purchased 65 different beers from local supermarkets and tested them for their health benefits — in particular their vitamin B content.
Beer, whether it’s alcoholic or not, is rich in essential nutrients, thanks to the barley and yeasts it’s brewed with. As more people shun alcohol for its negative health effects — not helped by recent assessments that show even small amounts of alcohol can increase a person’s risk of cancers and illnesses — the researchers wanted to understand what potentially healthy properties beer possesses and if those properties translate to non-alcoholic formats.
They analyzed the nutrient makeup of beers brewed from a variety of sources, including barley, rice and wheat, and found that, in alcoholic and non-alcoholic form, beers made with a technique called suppressed fermentation were full of pre- and probiotics, polyphenols, carbohydrates and one essential vitamin that’s hard to find in natural sources: B6.
And the source material that the beers were brewed from made a difference in the overall B6 availability of each one.
Ingredients typically found in beer — especially barley, wheat and brewer’s yeast — are widely known to be good sources of vitamin B6, but researchers weren’t sure if those nutrients are somehow affected by the process of removing the alcohol to create NA beer.
To see how alcohol-free beer’s nutrient profile compares to alcoholic beers, the researchers got to testing.
Bock beer, or beer brewed from barley, showed the highest levels of the vitamin. Next up were lagers, then dark lagers, then wheat beers and finally, rice beers with the lowest content.
There was no significant difference in the vitamin B6 content of NA beer and alcoholic beer.
Americans consume over 6 billion gallons of beer each year. Cagkan – stock.adobe.com NA beers that had their alcohol removed after full fermentation had higher B6 levels than NA beer that contained yeasts that produce less alcohol.
One NA lager provided nearly 59% of the US recommended dietary allowance for vitamin B6, compared to 20% by the average lager in the study.
This is good news for anyone who’s deficient in vitamin B6, for whom there’s an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, depression, diabetes, generalized inflammation and some cancers.
And it’s potentially good news for consumers of the more than 6 billion gallons of beer guzzled in the US annually, per the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).
While supplements can help fill nutritional gaps and vitamin deficiencies, medical experts recommend trying to get B vitamins from your diet.
The National Institutes of Health recommend fish, beef liver and other organ meats, potatoes and other starchy vegetables and non-citrus fruit.
Nutritional biochemist Dr. Erin Barrett, director of product innovation and scientific affairs at Shaklee, recently told The Post that, while B vitamins are considered the best nutritional energy boosters, she doesn’t think most people need to be supplementing with a separate B vitamin — with an exception for vegans or people who don’t eat much meat.
