Free beer - all in the name of research
drink a litre of beer a day. Researchers from the Institute of Food
Research in Norwich are investigating whether the folate in beer
can help reduce the risk of heart disease.
British men are being asked to suffer in the name of science and drink a litre of beer a day. Researchers from the Institute of Food Research in Norwich are investigating whether the folate in beer can help reduce the risk of heart disease, reports BBC Online.
The research is funded by the EU and - unfortunately for the participants - is using non-alcoholic beer to test whether the link between folate and heart disease can be determined.
Dr Paul Finglas, who is leading the Norwich research team, told the BBC that folate was thought to reduce levels of homocysteine, a hormone which is thought to cause blocked arteries and heart disease.
Finglas' team is focusing on 80 men, all of whom are being supplied with a litre a day of non-alcoholic German beer with the aim of seeing whether this will increase their folate intake and subsequently reduce homocysteine levels.
He added that the decision to use non-alcoholic beer had been a scientific one since alcohol was known to impair the absorption of folate into the body.
Folate or folic acid is already added to a number of foodstuffs across the world as a convenient means of increasing intake of the B vitamin, which is also known to help reduce the risk of neural tube defects such as spina bifida.
The Scottish authorities are thought to be considering adding various vitamins to beer as a means of improving health in that country, although the UK's Food Standards Agency recently recommended that folic acid should not be added to flour because not enough was yet known about whether it would mask other vitamin deficiencies.
