Dialogue: I'm sticking to beer and chocolates

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

Anything resembling the truth is hard to find within the torrent of information we receive nowadays on health matters. On the one hand is the persistent commercial nagging to buy up big on unhealthy food and on alcohol, supported by an industry of professional foodies and connoisseurs.

And on the other hand we have the blatant distortions of public health agencies' statistical analyses which reduce us all to averages and phoney units.

The connoisseurs will try to tell you that one form of booze, for example wine, is better for you than others, for example beer; while the public health people will tell you that it's all ethyl alcohol and ends up having the same deleterious effect no matter how you take it.

They are both right, of course.

And both wrong.

That is because truth is lodged in individual common sense, and not in marketing or averages and generalisations.

The commercial motivation is, obviously enough, about making money; whereas at least some of the public health commissars are motivated by a desire to shame you and me into being better, broader, more responsible people.

I'm not sure which motivation is more deserving of contempt.

I feel empowered (as we say in public life) to speak up on these matters by Listener food and booze guru Keith Stewart, who has written at length on my influence nationally on eating and drinking habits, an influence I had previously underestimated.

The alcohol health issue raised itself again this week when I received my St Patrick's Day information pack, and I'm pleased to see that beer has come out fighting as a force for good health, if - and this is very important - you're not allergic to it.

American scientists, it says, have revealed that dark beers have properties that help to ward off hardening of the arteries and even prevent cataracts. Australian research is lined up in support of moderate beer consumption, saying it helps to prevent strokes and coronary heart disease and encourages long life.

I can give you anecdotal evidence here to show how absurd statistical analysis is. When I was a cadet reporter in Palmerston North I did two stories in a year on locals who turned 100. When I asked to what did they attribute their longevity, one answered that he had two drams of whisky every night and smoked a relaxing pipe; the other said it was because neither alcohol nor tobacco smoke had ever sullied her lips.

A brewer friend (not a beer baron, but one of the people who make the stuff) once said to me in conversation: "The first pint of beer will certainly do you good. The second won't do you any harm, but from there on be careful." An eminently sensible man, and genial, too.

And that's the key to it. Balancing moderation with fun. My St Patrick's Day kit included the words of Danny Boy, which is a big help because while the first verse is indelibly imprinted on my memory, the second verse has faded. So I've swotted them, although after my second pint of dark beer tomorrow I'll probably just make them up as I go, as usual.

Its nice, though, to know one's tastebuds are discerning, that the brilliant Irish dark beers are good for me. It's the same sort of satisfaction I've received in recent years from being chocoholic.

Hardly a week goes by without some research somewhere in the world proving that chocolate is nutritious, an anti-depressant and great for the arteries. I've always liked chocolate with a good shiraz. My arteries must be as clean as a new steel pipe.

One of my interests over the years has been the history of attitudes to food. Beans, potatoes, coffee, tea, wine, beer and even water have all at times been revered and reviled by authorities.

Two hundred years ago, Englishman William Cobbett, the son of a farmer, who led an adventurous life, some of it in America and France, wrote with conviction on a huge range of subjects. His how-to books on writing and on courting are still usefully instructive, but his Cottage Economy always breaks me up.

In a chapter on brewing, he laments the decline in beer drinking for breakfast and the rise of tea: "I view the tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth and a maker of misery for old age.

"He [a typical labourer], instead of sitting down to a breakfast upon bread, bacon and beer, which is to carry him on to the hour of dinner, has to force his limbs along under the sweat of feebleness. To the wretched tea-kettle he has to return at night, with legs hardly sufficient to maintain him: thus he makes his miserable progress towards that death which he finds 10 or 15 years sooner than he would have found it if he made his wife brew beer instead of making tea."

And as for girls, "the gossip of the tea-table is no bad preparatory school for the brothel".

I don't know about beer for breakfast tomorrow. It might curtail my fun in the later reaches of the afternoon. I've always believed, though, that St Patrick's Day is more fun than the memorial day of any other figure, lay or religious, and I intend to reinforce that view tomorrow.