Drink Beer? Pay Attention to Your Diet: Study Suggests - Video

Beer drinkers have lower-quality diets, are less active, and are more likely to smoke cigarettes than people who drink wine, liquor, or a combination, according to a study presented at The Liver Meeting, held by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.

Using a survey of a nationally representative sample of more than 1,900 U.S. adults who reported current alcohol use, researchers compared the diet quality among people who consume beer only (38.9%), wine only (21.8%), liquor only (18.2%), or a combination of alcohol types (21%), measuring self-reported eating habits against the Healthy Eating Index, a validated standardized tool based on dietary guidelines.

None of the alcohol-using groups came close to achieving the 80-point score that is considered an adequate diet on the 100-point Healthy Eating Index, researchers said, but the beer drinkers scored lowest at 49. Wine drinkers scored 55, and both liquor-only drinkers and combination drinkers scored nearly 53.

Beer-only drinkers, who were more likely to be male, younger, smokers, and low income, also reported the highest total daily caloric intake, adjusting for body weight, and the lowest level of physical activity.

Researchers said the differences in diet quality among drinkers could be attributed to the context in which food and alcohol are consumed together. Another possibility is the inverse, where dietary choices influence the choice of alcohol consumed.

For prevention of liver disease and other health issues, physicians should ask about the type of alcohol consumed to guide discussion of healthy behaviors, said Madeline Novack, chief resident at Tulane School of Medicine’s internal medicine residency program and lead author of the study. For example, findings of this study can be applied to patients who identify as beer-only drinkers and physicians could suggest increasing fruit and vegetable intake, as well as physical activity.