Why beer makes us stronger
 

His best column. So many great lines in this one, but the opening line is best.

Survival of the Sudsiest

By George F. Will
Thursday, July 10, 2008; A15


Perhaps, like many sensible citizens, you read Investor's Business Daily for its sturdy common sense in defending free markets and other rational arrangements. If so, you too may have been startled recently by an astonishing statement on that newspaper's front page. It was in a report on the intention of the world's second-largest brewer, Belgium's InBev, to buy control of the third-largest, Anheuser-Busch, for $46.3 billion. The story asserted: "The [alcoholic beverage] industry's continued growth, however slight, has been a surprise to those who figured that when the economy turned south, consumers would cut back on nonessential items like beer."

"Non wh at"? Do not try to peddle that proposition in the bleachers or at the beaches in July. It is closer to the truth to say: No beer, no civilization.

The development of civilization depended on urbanization, which depended on beer. To understand why, consult Steven Johnson's marvelous 2006 book, "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World." It is a great scientific detective story about how a horrific cholera outbreak was traced to a particular neighborhood pump for drinking water. And Johnson begins a mind-opening excursion into a related topic this way:

"The search for unpolluted drinking water is as old as civilization itself. As soon as there were mass human settlements, waterborne diseases like dysentery became a crucial population bottleneck. For much of human history, the solution to this chronic public-health issue was not purifying the water supply. The solution was to drink alcohol."

Often the most pure fluid available was alcohol -- in beer and, later, wine -- which has antibacterial properties. Sure, alcohol has its hazards, but as Johnson breezily observes, "Dying of cirrhosis of the liver in your forties was better than dying of dysentery in your twenties." Besides, alcohol, although it is a poison, and an addictive one, became, especially in beer, a driver of a species-strengthening selection process.

Johnson notes that historians interested in genetics believe that the roughly simultaneous emergence of urban living and the manufacturing of alcohol set the stage for a survival-of-the-fittest sorting-out among the people who abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and, literally and figuratively speaking, went to town.

To avoid dangerous water, people had to drink large quantities of, say, beer. But to digest that beer, individuals needed a genetic advantage that not everyone had -- what Johnson describes as the body's ability to respond to the intake of alcohol by increasing the production of particular enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases. This ability is controlled by certain genes on chromosome four in human DNA, genes not evenly distributed to everyone. Those who lacked this trait could not, as the saying goes, "hold their liquor." So, many died early and childless, either of alcohol's toxicity or from waterborne diseases.

The gene pools of human settlements became progressively dominated by the survivors -- by those genetically disposed to, well, drink beer. "Most of the world's population today," Johnson writes, "is made up of descendants of those early beer drinkers, and we have largely inherited their genetic tolerance for alcohol."

Johnson suggests, not unreasonably, that this explains why certain of the world's population groups, such as Native Americans and Australian Aborigines, have had disproportionately high levels of alcoholism: These groups never endured the cruel culling of the genetically unfortunate that town dwellers endured. If so, the high alcoholism rates among Native Americans are not, or at least not entirely, ascribable to the humiliations and deprivations of the reservation system. Rather, the explanation is that not enough of their ancestors lived in towns.

But that is a potential stew of racial or ethnic sensitivities that we need not stir in this correction of Investor's Business Daily. Suffice it to say that the good news is really good: Beer is a health food. And you do not need to buy it from those wan, unhealthy-looking people who, peering disapprovingly at you through rimless Trotsky-style spectacles, seem to run all the health food stores.

So let there be no more loose talk -- especially not now, with summer arriving -- about beer not being essential. Benjamin Franklin was, as usual, on to something when he said, "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Or, less judgmentally, and for secular people who favor a wall of separation between church and tavern, beer is evidence that nature wants us to be.

But I read it has female hormones in it.

BTW, why did he even mention Budweiser? Who considers that to be beer anyway?

Beer--the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems. :D

The depends on who you are trying to impress ;)

I've found drinking beer increases the force of gravity and the more you drink the greater the increase. This is why it's difficult to stand up.

Why beer makes us stronger - really, does it even need explained?

Beer also improves one's mental performance. Everyone knows that alcohol kills brain cells, but few people realize that it attacks the weak ones first. By eliminating the weak and sick brain cells, it improves the brains performance. Ask any drunk about anything and they'll have all the answers for you. Now you now why you can never win an argument with a drunk.

Stupidity: Homer Simpson: Beer Quotes
Homer no function beer well without.

Insults: Homer Simpson: Beer Quotes
You've been rubbing my nose in it since I got here! Your family is better than my family, your beer comes from farther away than my beer, you and your son like each other, your wife's butt is higher than my wife's butt! You make me sick!

Opinions: Homer Simpson: Beer Quotes
Beer... Now there's a temporary solution.

Opinions: Homer Simpson: Beer Quotes
I like my beer cold... my TV loud... and my homosexuals flaming.

Opinions: Homer Simpson: Beer Quotes
Ah, the college road trip. What better way to spread beer-fueled mayhem?

Opinions: Homer Simpson: Beer Quotes
You must love this country more than I love a cold beer on a hot Christmas morning.

Opinions: Homer Simpson: Beer Quotes
I've figured out an alternative to giving up my beer. Basically, we become a family of traveling acrobats.

Opinions: Homer Simpson: Beer Quotes
Bart, a woman is like beer. They look good, they smell good, and you'd step over your own mother just to get one!

Parenting: Homer Simpson: Beer Quotes
Aw, there's only one can of beer left and it's Bart's.

Parenting: Homer Simpson: Beer Quotes
Now son, you don't want to drink beer. That's for Daddies, and kids with fake IDs.

Wise Cracks: Homer Simpson: Beer Quotes
All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.

1 liter curls does it everytime.

These pretzels are making me thirsty

No no no. it's "These pretzels are making me thirsty".

It's all in the emphasis.

:)