Under the right conditions beer is clearly better, but the researchers cheated by allowing the participants to drink water. These studies are incredibly lame, you can't learn anything from them because they aren't extreme enough and they already presuppose moderation. Everything in moderation, great... they even recommend an ideal dossage of beer, say 500ML Seriously...I am going to stop by a bar and ask for 500ML of beer, that is half a liter so if I am served a 22 oz Draft I will leave some at the bottom...please!

I want to do a true study on lack of moderation. I want to collect the various experts and fanatics in the field of liquids. And I want to find those willing to consume a single beverage while eating no solid food for 2 weeks. Of course all the sophisticated experts in water tasting might recoil at having no food to eat...so I will probably have to find a harder sort of man...Probably a Collegiate or High school wrestler trying to shed weight(I knew one whose diet consisted of ice cubes for a week straight and he lived)..He could have as wide a selection of various bottled waters as he desires. Then I would comb the various fraternity houses...say at OU or OSU and conduct a proper study. I would collect a stable of true binge drinking alcoholics and put them in a room with an unlimited supply of various largers and ales again with no other stapple for two weeks.

Then I would find those people I knew who survived on nothing but Mountain Dew or Coca Cola...you know the type...you never see them eating but they always have a bottle of soda. I would put them in a room with an untold variety of caffinated beverages.

Every participant would have a bell in his room that he could ring proclaiming his surrender. The fanatic that made it the longest with his beverage of choice would win a lifetime supply of that beverage.

It would be interesting...on the one hand the wrestler might have the most discipline and stoicness, but a long fast could prove more than he could handle. The Fraternity guys might have the best beverage for enduring such a challenge but they might lack discipline and end up poisoning themselves on alcohol. The nerdy Mountain Dew drinkers might end up winning by default. It would at least be interesting because instead of trying to tell us something about moderation it would tell us something about lack of moderation.

Maybe Michael Moore would be interested, get Johnny Deep and make it a sort of cross between the message of SuperSize Me/Willie Wonka...with another group that drinks nothing but Chocolate Milk. Kids asking for more Ovaltine if you please, would never be quite the same again. The water fanatics would be quite infuriated when the once healthy wrestler is captured as an emmaciated shell while chugging Perier or Evan. Even better if you can get an anorexic female model who looses her curves with her 8 glasses a day.

This is only one study. It means very little. It may turn out to be true, but I have a feeling that further study will reveal this test to be an anomaly and then the headlines will make it sound like the scientists are changing their mind about the health benefits of beer, instead of the truth: that the stupid media put too much weight on one study. The media has done more to discredit science through their own stupidity than any other modern institution. Scientists change their minds, yes, but not nearly so often as the media likes to indicate. The scientific community will publish a study that suggests something strange -- like this one -- merely as an interesting story that suggests a path for more research, and then the media will make it sound like scientists actually believe that this one study actually means something.

The wisdom of the Poets:

"In Heaven there is no beer,
That's why we drink it here!"
(Anonymous)

"Malt does more than Milton can,
To justify the ways of God to man."
(A. E. Housman)

"In vino, veritas,
in beero, loquacitas."
(Paul Seaton)

Wow! Each of the responses is a lot more thoughtful than the post. It's true enough that we don't quite have enough evidence yet to roll the kegs into the Ohio State locker room. But I still say that there's nothing stupider than drinking bottled water.