Ill be 60 later this year.
Hooray!
Me too!
The big six-oh...
60 is the new 30!
The thing I will say is how harmful the non alcoholic just can be?
I like the 0٪ pear cider, but I think to much will spike me sugar.
The Guinness I know is good, just not sure about the 0٪ lagers.
Guinness 0% has 3.1g sugar in the 440ml can and 75 kcals.
Heineken 0% lager (330ml) by comparison has 4.3g of sugar and 69 kcals.
If you scale those Heineken figures up to the same 440ml can size as Guinness, the sugar would be 5.73g and the kcals 92.
If I do the same calculations for Corona Cero and Peroni 0%, it comes out at 3.08g of sugar per 440ml and 75 kcals for Corona and 2.64g and 76 for Peroni 0%.
As for my favourite St Peter's Without blue label, it's heavy, man! For the same 440ml volume, it contains 11.44g sugar and 224 kcals.
So you can see, the beers can vary significantly.
As for bacterial content in Guinness, there isn't really any.
All the yeast used in the brewing process is dead. There are no gut bacteria as such, but there are polyphenols that feed the bacteria already in your gut.
Having said that, polyphenols are present in other beers too, and other drinks, like tea and brewed coffee, and fruit and vegetable juices. They are also in wines, but much higher in red wines than white and also in foods like chocolate.
Higher in dark chocolate than milk or white because they are concentrated in the cocoa solids.
Other foods that are top sources of polyphenols are, in no particular order,
Oregano
Blackberries
Flax seeds
Red onions
Blueberries
Pecans
Plums
Spinach
Almonds
Cherries
Peppermint tea
Artichokes
Beetroot
The health benefits of polyphenols are manifold.
As I mentioned before, they help feed good bacteria in your gut.
They keep your BP and cholesterol in check.
They help manage your blood sugar.
What's not to like?
I've got very interested now in improving my health and spoken to various health professionals who are treating me and many just want to pump me up with more drugs. I have told them I want to do it naturally, so I have resisted Monjaro. The GP rang me the other day after a blood test and told me I was deficient in minerals and wanted to give me yet more pills, I told him I would correct it by diet, when I went into hospital with my broken ankle I was pre-diabetic, now I am 3 points lower.
When I was bed-bound with my broken ankle, I had a heck of a lot of time to think.
I was thinking how hopelessly overweight I was and it seemed so overwhelming. I realised that if I didn't do something soon, I would be leaving this world much sooner than I should otherwise.
I compared myself to others who seemed to have crammed an incredible amount of stuff into their lives and I lay there thinking, what have I done?
Literally, later that day, Mrs S came in with a framed photo of 3 of the most amazing achievements in my life.
Admittedly, I couldn't have done it without her!
Our three lads.
Ruminating in hospital kick-started my weight loss and fast forward to today, I am still losing weight (although it has slowed down), and I am looking forward to the results of the latest bloods to see how my kidneys and liver are coping and whether my HbA1c has dropped further.
I think it's fantastic that you have decided to cut out some alcohol.
You will surely feel the benefit.
What I've realised with my own life recently is that you can make relatively small changes with diet that can have quite an impact. In other words, you don't have to go all extreme.
Happy eating and drinking, people!
