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Guinness Is Good For You*
*Some caveats apply... This is our myth-buster edition!
The 10almonds Team
March 17, 2023
Ever find yourself stuck in an online argument with an idiot? If you skipped the advice “never argue with an idiot; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference”, all is not lost:
Here’s the rule: give yourself a “3 reply limit”. If you have made three replies to a person and made no progress, bow out—you can save face easily by explaining your 3 reply rule, e.g:
“I have a personal rule to save my time when arguing with an idiot on the Internet, I’ll only reply a maximum of three times unless progress is made. We’ve hit that now, so I’ll not reply further”
…and then really don’t reply further, no matter how tempting or how they try to bait you! Let them be the one who looks silly trying.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and what’s more, it’s Myth-buster Friday at 10almonds. We’ll be talking about…
The biggest exercise myths (debunked)
Guinness is good for you! (alas, not very)
Grain of truth
Healthier version!
Seaweed
Smarter Tomorrow (very accessible book for the “citizen scientist” interested in experimenting with brain-hacking)
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
Harvard professor debunks the biggest exercise myths
❝We hold many misconceptions about exercise. For example, we believe our ancestors were incredibly strong, or that there is a tradeoff between speed and strength.
The worst myth is that it’s normal to be less physically active as you get older. But modern hunter-gatherers remain physically active as they age.❞
Prefer a transcript? Click Here To Read The Transcript!
☘️ MAIN FEATURE
Guinness Is Good For You*
*This is our myth-buster edition, so maybe best not take that at face value!
To this day, writing the words “Guinness is” into Google will autocomplete to “Guinness is good for you”. The ad campaign proclaiming such launched about a hundred years ago, and was based on Guinness as it was when it was launched another hundred years before that.
Needless to say, none of this was based on modern science.
Is there any grain of truth?
Perhaps its strongest health claim, in terms of what stands up to modern scrutiny, is that it does contain some B vitamins. Famously (as it was once given to pregnant women in Ireland on the strength of such) it contains folate (also known as Vitamin B9). How much?
A 15oz glass of Guinness contains 12.8µg of folate, which is 3.2% of the RDA. In other words, you could get all the folate your body needs by drinking just 32 glasses of Guinness per day.
With that in mind, you might want to get the non-alcoholic version!
“I heard you could live on just Guinness and oranges, because it contains everything but vitamin C?”
The real question is: how long could you live? Otherwise, a facetious answer here could be akin to the “fun fact” that you can drink lava… once.
Guinness is missing many essential amino acids and fatty acids, several vitamins, and many minerals. Exactly what it’s missing may vary slightly from region to region, as while the broad recipe is the same, some processes add or remove some extra micronutrients.
As to what you’d die of first, for obvious reasons there have been no studies done on this, but our money would be on liver failure.
It would also wreak absolute havoc with your kidneys, but kidneys are tricky beasts—you can be down to 10% functionality and unaware that anything’s wrong yet. So we think liver failure would get you first.
(Need that 0.0% alcohol Guinness link again? Here it is)
Fun fact: Top contender in the category of “whole food” is actually seaweed (make sure you don’t get too much iodine, though)!
Or, should we say, top natural contender. Because foods that have been designed by humans to contain everything we need and more for optimized health, such as Huel, do exactly what they say on the tin.
And in case you’re curious…
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
Smarter Tomorrow - by Elizabeth Ricker
Based heavily in hard science, with more than 450 citations in over 300 pages, the exhortation is not just "trust me, lol".
Instead, she encourages the reader to experiment. Not like "try this and see if it works", but "here’s how to try this, using scientific method with good controls and good record-keeping".
The book is divided into sections, each with a projection of time required at the start and a summary at the end. The reading style is easy-reading throughout, without sacrificing substance.
It proposes seven key interventions. If just one works for you, it'll be worth having bought and read the book. More likely most if not all will... Because that's how science works.
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The 10almonds Team