[article] Food Buying Habits of People Who Buy Beer or Wine

[Dan McFeeley]

Ran across ths article on another forum -- take a look:

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/332/7540/519

According to the article:

Results: Wine buyers bought more olives, fruit and
vegetables, poultry, cooking oil, and low fat cheese,
milk, and meat than beer buyers. Beer buyers
bought more ready cooked dishes, sugar, cold
cuts, chips, pork, butter or margarine, sausages,
lamb, and soft drinks than wine buyers.

Conclusions: Wine buyers made more purchases
of healthy food items than people who buy beer.

I gotta look through my files -- dang it, they're too disorganized, not sure I can find them right now. Wine and beer cultures point to really old distinctions based on the Roman empire. It's not that beer drinkers are lazy and irresponsible when it comes to health choices, i.e., pizza and beer v/s wine and olive oil drenched salad. It's the Mediterranean culture v/s Northern cultures. This stuff goes way way back.

If I can track them down I'll post the links.

Anyway -- I'm guessing that mead makers/consumers fall somewhere in between the comparison groups, but are still less likely to buy stuff like chips, ready made stuff, fatty stuff, etc.

Any comments?

 

[Miriam]

Dan,

The idea of cultural differences makes sense to me. The study is based on European and American populations only, though. I wonder if those theories hold true out of Europe, say in the Far East or Africa. The Ethiopians I know prefer Tej or beer, for instance, and the typical Ethiopian diet is very high in vegetables and fiber-rich foods, sourdough and spices. ...does that add anything or is it irrelevant?

I don't know about other mead drinkers, but living in the Middle East (or Mediterranean, depending on from what point of view), where fruit and vegetables are cheap and plentiful, and where good olive oil is abundant, my family's diet resembles the wine-drinker's. Much more fish and poultry than beef, a variety of fresh and aged cheeses regularly consumed, salads every day, that sort of thing. I was just thinking of avgolemono soup this evening, as a matter of fact...

The Russian immigration has brought a new and huge variety of sausages to the markets - and they drink beer and grain-based vodka. Don't know if that proves anything, but it's interesting to note.

Miriam

 

[Laiquatan]

"I eat chips and pizza with my beer because I'm of Scandanavian descent!"

... Naaaahhhhhh.... I don't buy it.

 

[The Honey Farmer]

I'm English, German and French, I eat it all and drink it all. It makes for a wonderful diet. ;D ;D ;D

Dennis at 5' 7" and 150 lbs. ;D

 

[Dan McFeeley]

I don't know about other mead drinkers, but living in the Middle East (or Mediterranean, depending on from what point of view), where fruit and vegetables are cheap and plentiful, and where good olive oil is abundant, my family's diet resembles the wine-drinker's. Much more fish and poultry than beef, a variety of fresh and aged cheeses regularly consumed, salads every day, that sort of thing. I was just thinking of avgolemono soup this evening, as a matter of fact...

The Russian immigration has brought a new and huge variety of sausages to the markets - and they drink beer and grain-based vodka. Don't know if that proves anything, but it's interesting to note.

Oohh -- avgolemono soup. I made this once, long time ago. Good stuff. Got interested in it because my sister had married into a Greek family (first husband, long story, not worth telling here . . . )

I thought the study was one of those preliminary things, i.e., raises all kinds of interesting questions but nothing really conclusive just yet.

My thoughts here are that mead makers tend to fall in between the cracks when it comes to cultural trends. Some of us identify with the beer cultures (Northern), others with wine culture (Mediterranean), and then there's folk like Oskaar whose ethnic roots remind us not to draw too easy conclusions on beer v/s wine. Oh yeah, and yourself! ;D

Fuzzy logic rules! (inside joke for Oskaar, sort of ;D )

 

[yabodie]

I read this article when it was published and thought it was pretty neat. Now if they only pulled out salt and vinegar chips in the analysis...

On a different note, the study population is somewhat limited because the researchers only looked at sales receipts for the specified Danish grocery stores during the winter (September to February). It would be an interesting study to look at the receipts for an entire year to determine if seasonality played into the conclusions. Sort of comfort food buying in the wintertime for the beer drinkers might have skewed the results a wee bit. Also the stores

I am not sure if this sort of study has been done or could be done in the US or UK as not all stores sell beer/wine along with foods. Also they could not look at hard alcohol and how food habits relate to liqueur sales.

Neat paper over all and we had quite a chuckle at my work over it.