Beer is one of the most popular beverages in the world, yet it’s certainly not the healthiest! As any beer-lovers will testify, drinking too much beer isn’t the best for your waistline, as beer has one of the highest calorie counts of any alcoholic beverage – it’s called a beer belly for a reason!
The reason beer isn’t the healthiest is because the calories are stored rather than being burned by your metabolism, with the liver burning the alcohol content instead. This is made even worse when eating and drinking beer at the same time, which is unfortunate as food and beer go so well together!
Whether you’re looking to slim down or simply drop some unhealthy habits, a good place to start is by ditching the beer, or at least cutting back how much of it you consume. Instead, try some of these healthy alternatives:
Kombucha
A fermented black tea drink with origins dating back thousands of years to ancient China, kombucha is purported to offer an endless range of health benefits. While most of these claims come with little evidence, there are some instances where kombucha does offer health benefits.
The most obvious example is probiotics. Kombucha is rich in probiotics due to the yeast used when making the beverage (it’s combined with black tea, sugar, and various other ingredients such as sugar, honey, fruit etc.), along with an abundance of healthy bacteria.
After the fermentation process, kombucha also produces B vitamins and enzymes, which along with the probiotics, help promote a healthy gut and immune system. A healthy immune system better fights off infection and better absorbs nutrients, making kombucha a great alternative to beer. It also has fewer calories than beer, although a much lower alcohol content, at around 0.5%.
A good place to buy this is at https://leftfieldkombucha.co.uk/ as they offer some of the best Kombucha that you can find.
Kvass
Kvass is similar to kombucha, being a fermented drink with a very low alcohol content of around .5%. It’s made from rye bread and a combination of other ingredients, including strawberries, rains, and herbs such as mint.
It has plenty of probiotics to help keep your immune system going strong, while high fibre content makes it good for digestion. Depending the ingredients, it can also help cleanse the liver, namely using beets.
Red Wine
If you still want to enjoy an alcoholic beverage but want something a little healthier than beer, then be sure to consider red wine. Granted, the sugar content is quite high, but this is certainly levelled out by the various other health benefits from regularly drinking the odd glass of red wine.
Perhaps the most notable health benefit from drinking red wine is antioxidants. Red wine is packed with antioxidants, namely flavonoids, which naturally increase the body’s ability to fight off diseases and illness, reducing the risks of developing serous conditions.
As with any alcoholic drink that offers health benefits, it’s only gained from drinking moderate amounts of wine, so the odd glass with dinner certainly makes for a healthier alternative to beer.
