this totally justifies the two daiquiris i threw back at breakfast

Have a drink and solve a weighty problem
By Jacqueline Maley Medical Reporter
November 3, 2005

Drinking alcohol before a meal may help keep the fat away, according to new research which contradicts the popularly held view that alcohol contributes to obesity.

"If you have a pre-dinner drink - beer, wine or spirits - it tends to reduce the blood-sugar response to the next meal," said Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, a renowned expert on the glycaemic index who announced her findings yesterday.

The research, discussed at the launch of a weight-loss product targeted at men, may explain why alcohol helps fend off cardiovascular disease. "We know alcohol tends to increase levels of your good cholesterol," said Professor Brand-Miller, from the school of human nutrition at the University of Sydney. "But that only explains about half the [protective] effect."

Professor Brand-Miller's research, which will be presented at a Nutrition Society of Australia meeting this month, involved three studies of 38 young, lean people with an average age of 22. The subjects drank about an hour before eating, quaffing beer, wine, spirits and water in random order. Their blood-sugar and insulin levels were measured afterwards.

The alcohol seemed to produce a "priming" effect, kicking off the metabolism process and keeping blood-sugar levels low as the meal was consumed. As a toxin, alcohol is burned with great urgency by the body, and this urgency seemed to transfer to food consumed two to three hours after drinking.

"The lower the rise in blood sugar, the better your health," Professor Brand-Miller said. As well as fighting fat, the effects of the alcohol could be beneficial to those at risk of Type 2 diabetes, or about one in four Australians, she said. These people have high blood-sugar levels, which can harm organs including the heart, the eyes, the kidney and nervous tissue.

Professor Stephan Rossner, a director of an obesity research program at Luddinge Hospital in Stockholm, said the initial research results were fascinating.

"Alcohol has a thermogenic effect. It speeds up the metabolism of the body," he said.

Alcohol was associated with weight gain because people tended to lose control when drinking, and eat fatty foods, Professor Rossner said.