I realize that the Ventura County Reporter isn’t exactly mainstream media, but they’re in print and people believe what they read in print, so they’re fair game as far as I’m concerned, especially when they wear their ignorance on their sleeve. A regular column in the alternative weekly, called Body Politics, is written by Robert Ferguson, who apparently is a diet guru, at least according his byline, which reads:

Robert Ferguson is recognized as the weight loss “guru” and wellness expert, co-author of Fat That Doesn’t Come Back, speaker and has Diet Free Life offices in Southern California. E-mail him at robert@dietfreelife.com, or visit his Web site at www.dietfreelife.com.

Apparently in his column each week he answers questions sent in by readers. This week’s is particularly troubling. The question is innocuous enough, here it is:

You often talk about the benefits of drinking wine, but what about beer?

— Cia W., Thousand Oaks

Okay, Bobby, you got my attention, please tell me. What are the benefits of drinking beer? He brings up only one of the numerous studies showing health benefit for moderate beer drinking, this about “men who drank 11-24 pints” having a 66% reduced chance of getting a heart attack over teetotalers who drank none at all. All well and good, but he also says that the scientists conducting the study were “shocked” by the findings. Hardly. It’s not like the health benefits of beer is a new phenomenon. People have known beer is good for them for millennia and there were centuries when it was preferable to water, health-wise. But it shows his true disdain for beer while at the same time trying to appear unbiased.

Ignoring the many other and different ways beer provides health benefits, he then suggests that “[j]ust because there is a hint [my emphasis] of health associated with beer doesn’t mean it’s to your benefit to rush out and purchase a case of your favorite flavor.” Setting aside that beer doesn’t really come in “flavors,” but styles, just because he apparently knows only about a single study doesn’t mean there’s only a hint of benefits. A simple Google search of “health benefits of beer” would have revealed to him over 9 million hits! Even if only a tiny fraction were legitimate scientific studies, that would still be many more than one. Just in the last few years, there have been many new major findings on the health benefits of beer. But why use facts, when as a “guru” you can pretend to know what you’re talking about.

But Bobby’s not done insulting beer yet, as he ends with this bit of wisdom:

The challenge with beer is that it’s not usually sipped, but guzzled. And guzzling positions you to consume more than if you were to sip it.

Now here was a perfect opportunity to educate Cia and his readers that there are thousands of great beers designed to be sipped rather than knocked back. But instead Bobo, who appears to know precious little about beer, chose instead to recommend the following:

If you want weight loss however, choose a five-ounce glass of wine instead.

Dammit this is the sort of thing that if I were a cartoon would make smoke shoot out of my ears. Why does wine always get trotted out as this saintly stuff, perfect for a diet? Ferguson cautioned earlier in the article that beer had “alcohol and calories,” making it bad for dieting, apparently. But so does wine. And ounce for ounce wine has more calories than beer does. There’s 100 calories in five ounces of wine, while a similar amount of beer contains (depending on the amount of protein) between 50-75 calories which is — say it with me — less. Why couldn’t he have suggested that Cia share a nice bottle of Cuvee de Tomme (Ventura is in Southern California, after all) with some friends, having only five ounces herself in a nice tulip glass? She was asking about beer, after all, not wine. But talk of alcohol and health always seems to work its way back to grapes, despite the mounting evidence of beer’s positive benefits in a myriad of areas. This perception of wine as angelically good and beer as demonically bad is one tough nut to crack. People seem very, very attached to this misconception. We could debate the reasons for this and where the culpability lies, but that’s for another day. The fact is our cause it not helped by so-called experts like this guy who in his zeal to sell diet books, magazines and his online weight loss program, ignores the facts and plays on old stereotypes to misinform the public.
 

Robert Ferguson, the “Diet Guru.” “Remember kids, don’t guzzle that beer, you’ll get fat.“