What Your Alcohol Preference May Say About Your Diet

 Written by Lisa O’Mary

Nov. 13, 2024 – You’ve heard of food and wine pairings. But what about food and beer pairings? Apparently, they’re not very healthy.

People whose choice of alcoholic beverage is exclusively beer tend to have particularly poor diets. They also are more likely to be less physically active, smoke cigarettes, and have low incomes.

That’s according to a new study published in the journal Nutrients and being presented this weekend at the annual conference called The Liver Meeting, held by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.

For the study, researchers analyzed data for 1,900 U.S. adults who shared their alcohol consumption habits and dietary information. Among them, 39% were beer-only drinkers, 22% said they only drink wine, 18% said they only drink liquor, and 21% said they drink multiple types of alcohol.

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For diet, the researchers compared the people’s eating patterns to a measure of how well they followed a federally recommended diet. The measurement tool is called the Healthy Eating Index, which is based on a perfect score of 100 and a healthy diet score of 80. None of the groups scored well, but beer drinkers scored the worst, with a 49. Wine drinkers averaged a score of 55, while liquor-only and combination drinkers scored 53.

The average score for people ages 19 to 59 years old nationwide is 57, according to data published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“Alcohol consumption and poor dietary habits are on the rise in the United States, posing significant challenges to public health due to their contribution to chronic diseases such as liver failure,” the authors wrote, explaining why they did the study. “While associations between alcohol consumption patterns and diet quality have been explored, the relationship between specific alcoholic beverage types and diet quality remains underexamined.”

The beer-only drinkers tended to be men, younger, more likely to smoke, and have lower income, compared to other drinkers. They also tended to have low physical activity levels and high-calorie diets, even when the researchers adjusted for body weight.

Previous research has linked poor diet with an increased risk of liver problems. Chronic liver disease, which includes the condition called cirrhosis, has been on the rise in the U.S. and affects an estimated 4.5 million people (nearly 2 out of every 100 adults). It is the 10th leading cause of the death, and the condition is being diagnosed more in younger people.

“Alcohol overuse is the leading cause of cirrhosis in the U.S., and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is rapidly increasing,” lead study author Madeline Novack, MD, chief resident at Tulane School of Medicine’s internal medicine residency program, said in a news release. “Both types of liver disease often coexist, and lifestyle changes are key to managing and preventing these conditions, starting with understanding the link between alcohol use and poor nutrition.”

The study had some important limitations, the authors noted, including that data were collected from 2017 to March 2020, and alcohol use patterns may have changed since the pandemic. They also noted that cultural impacts on diet and alcohol use could not be thoroughly controlled for, although the data was deemed to be nationally representative based on numerous demographic factors.