*If you’re into reading just the headline of a story, that is. See, a group called CAMRA, an advocacy group pushing real ale, has come up with a great claim that beer is actually healthier and filled with less calories than wine. And it will help you lose weight! But not really.

“Not only that,” it announced earlier this month, “but swapping wine for beer, for just one week, could save as many calories as a half-hour jog.”

So if you want to stay fit, throw away those old trainers and get drinking. Of course this was probably not the message Camra was trying to get across, but that subtlety may have been lost on the crowd of 60,000 at the Great British Beer Festival, where the announcement was made. You can imagine the contented sighs, the odd burp and the collective patting of the great British beer belly.

To back up its claims, Camra commissioned a report which states: “A half-pint of 3.8% bitter has 85 calories, a medium glass of red wine has 119 calories and a bottle of 5% alcopop has 179 calories.” There is also evidence from the Czech Republic, whose per capita beer consumption puts all others to shame. A study of 2,300 drinkers there found they put on almost no more weight around the abdomen than non-drinkers.

So there you have it, everyone. Next time you go to the bar, make sure you order the super low ABV beer in the standard half-pint glass that all bars have at the ready. And make sure to not drink more of it than you would wine. Because THEN, beer will be healthier than wine, or whatever the hell alcopop is. Crazy Brits.

Herald Scotland — Tom Bruce-Gardyne on the so-called “myth of the beer belly”