Of beer and mosquitos, beer and bones, and ... More research is obviously needed

Where? Where, we ask you, is the beer research? We’re always hearing about wine -- part of a healthful diet and all that, yes, yes -- but its more humble (in popular opinion) cousin, beer, always seems to be an afterthought in terms of health-related research.

Greg Laden’s blog, called Greg Laden’s Blog, over in the ScienceBlogs collection got us thinking about the topic with Friday’s post: Does drinking beer increase your attractiveness ... to mosquitoes? And the answer is yes.

He was referring to this study, Beer Consumption Increases Human Attractiveness to Malaria Mosquitoes, over at PLoS One.

That’s intriguing, no? So we went hunting for more beer-and-health studies. And we found:

Silicon in beer and brewing, from UC Davis researchers. It was published earlier this year in Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.

It concludes: “It is confirmed that beer is a very rich source of silicon.” Don’t doze off -- silicon is connected to bone health. But, as the 80beats blog over at Discover points out, the study doesn’t suggest that means beer is good for bone health.

Here was a popular interpretation of that research, from New York Daily News: Study finds beer is good for your bones: Light-colored ales most effective against osteoporosis

Beyond that much-touted but overhyped study (which, to us, suggests an unquenched desire for more beer research), we found not too much of late.

But perhaps there’s more high-quality beer-and-health research out there that has passed under Booster Shots’ radar.... If so, let us know. (Note this is not an invitation to send personal anecdotes. We’ve said it once, we’ll say it again: Anecdotes are not data.)

We could look further ourselves, but it’s Friday evening...

In the meantime, we’ll leave you with this summary of the health benefits of various types of alcohol from the Harvard School of Public Health newsletter. It states:

“Wine, beer, or spirits — each seems to have the same health benefits as long as moderation’s the word (no more than one drink per day for women, and no more than two drinks per day for men).”

A bit more on that topic, from the same newsletter is here: Is Wine Fine, or Beer Better?

-- Tami Dennis

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