When we were young in Belgium in the 1960’s and 1970’s, low alcohol beer was the normal beverage at school, and had been normal for many centuries. Low alcohol means the beer contains a maximum of 1.5 % alcohol by volume. This style of beer is called ‘Table-beer’ in Belgium. In the 1980’s and 1990 political correctness mixed together with marketing efforts by the soft drink companies got the upper-hand, and table beer disappeared from the schools. Of course, obesity in school children became a problem during the last 20 years. Some don’t accept the connection between soft drinks and obesity, others do.

Every year when school is about to start again, several advocates in Belgium who have the best interest of the pupils in mind, plead to ban soft drinks from school and to replace them with the table beer of earlier days. So far, they have not succeeded, even though tests have clearly shown that we don’t have to be afraid of drunken pupils. Children who drank an 11.2 oz bottle of table beer after abstaining from food for 12 hours did not show any alcohol in their blood. Table beer doesn’t boost the insulin concentration in the body, as do soft drinks, and thus the risk for diabetes, obesity and cancer are far less. Table beer is far lower in calories too, and table beer offers vitamins and antioxidants.

Table beers are still consumed in hospitals and in prisons in Belgium. This every-day-beer was the basic drink of the whole population until well into the 1950’s. Nobody drank water. Soft drinks were introduced by the US army after WW II.

Newsletter October/November 2007