(Davis, CA) – I don’t cover a lot of mainstream stuff, especially beer and health items. Nevertheless, if you take a gander at Google News today, you will find approximately 100 articles in the last 24 hours referencing a new study published in the current issue of Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. The study says that high silicon content in beer is helpful for bone density and it isn’t the first to do so.
The Telegraph referenced a study from Spanish researchers in August. Jay Brooks has been a strong proponent of these studies, providing a good summary of the Spain study, pointing to one done last year at Tufts, and another one in the February issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
I also found this article from RealBeer printed in 2004 referencing a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition.
The only thing that bothers me about the new study is that the lead researcher on the project, Charlie Bamforth of UC Davis, has worked in the beer industry for decades and is endowed/funded by Anheuser-Busch. My guess is that a lot of scientific studies carry these sorts of conflicts of interest though and this study seems to validate the many others as mentioned.
I doubt Bamforth to have any inclination towards misleading people in order to push beer. Having read and reread his books and spoken with graduates of the UC Davis brewing program, it seems highly unlikely to me that he would ever purposely deceive people, especially in matters of health.
I’m guessing that you are right, Cory. Benefit of the doubt goes to Charlie but it’s a disclosure that should probably be made.
The paper makes no claims to beer and health directly, it references other independent studies about them. This paper shows that silicon is found in beer and is found in different levels in different styles. In fact, the higher alcohol beers like IPAs have more silicon, which might make ABI mad since they don’t make a lot of IPA!
Ahh, good to know. Do you have a link to the actual paper? I tried to hunt it down and even got to the Atlanta Journal February issue with a bunch of abstracts that had nothing to do w/ beer.