Chris Shanahan: Neurotic language for beer, too

Fat people drink skinny milk and skinny people drink fat milk. Could we be seeing the same paradox with low carb beers– the fatter we get the more we’ll turn to it in hope? By all accounts the style’s going gangbusters under names like Classic Blonde, Pure Blonde, Bondi Blonde and Platinum Blonde.

Giving up flavour in the slender hope of weight loss seems like a big sacrifice. But if you actually like the taste of beer and trade down from a full-blooded brew to one of the blondes, your kilojoule intake may not fall as much you’d hoped.

That’s because the beers tend to be full strength at a little under five per cent alcohol by volume. And alcohol carries a fairly dense energy load of around nine calories per gram.

A low-carb beer might have in the vicinity of 35 grams of alcohol in every litre. And Platinum Blonde, for example, claims to have about 14 grams of carbohydrate per litre, compared to 25 to 40 grams in a standard lager.

For those with weight problems a better solution might be to stick to full, rich, flavoursome beers but drink less. That way, at least, you can savour what you drink.