If beer isn’t good for you why are they selling it in chemist shops

Germans are drinking less beer. Part of the reason is that beer isn’t cool anymore but perhaps the major cause is the country’s ageing population. Older consumers are becoming more health conscious and are turning to drinks with a healthier image. According to Euromonitor "Wine, with its well-documented health benefits when consumed in moderation, coupled with its sophisticated image" is benefiting from this trend. That’s bad news for beer.

Germany’s brewers have reacted by producing a range of mixed drinks based on beer. ‘Cool’ Cola, lemonade and fruit flavoured drinks are targeted at younger consumers while healthy-styled products spiked with medicinal herbs targeted at older drinkers. And perhaps the most interesting response to declining sales is not what goes into beer-based products, but where they are being sold.

At a recent press conference Karlsberg’s Richard Weber asked the audience, "Did you know that two thirds of all over-50s go to the pharmacy once a week?" According to Weber this makes pharmacies an ideal place to sell the company’s new beer-based product Karla:

Karla has been a hot topic of discussion since its launch in May. And no wonder: this product (and its sales channel) has shaken up the industry. It’s the combination of various factors that makes Karla a true innovation: what we have here is two new, tasty beverages on the basis of beer, with added ingredients with proven pharmacological effects. The products were developed in conjunction with pharmacists – the basic idea was: we’re all mixers in our own way. So why not combine an active ingredient from the pharmacy with the great taste of Karlsberg?

Beer makers are keeping a sharp eye out for research which might help turn around the product’s Homer-on-the-couch-with-donuts image. So when scientists discovered that a compound in hops that showed promise in the fight against some cancers (more here) brewers began to look at ways to include more of it in their product.

Weihanstephan are marketing a product called Xan which contains higher than normal levels of this cancer fighting compound Xanthohumol. But according to researchers there’s not much point trying to fight cancer by drinking beer. The product contains far too little of the active ingredient for it to have any therapeutic effect.

So sorry Nicholas. If you’re going to take Rafe‘s advice and start drinking Coopers for breakfast you’re going to have to find another excuse.

‘Economic reform’ gets blamed for many things. I heard someone complaining about growth at all costs, they then segued into its costs on the environment. Then we had the greenhouse effect and the poor person couldn’t help themselves and went on to wonder about the tsunami. Dear oh dear.

In any event for a long time there’s been a gung ho tendency in economic reform in which ‘private sector’ methods are seen as inherently worthy and better than public sector methods, ignoring the different circumstances in which the two sectors have evolved their own approaches to things.

Sadly the Cassandras who are nevertheless enthusiasts for reform properly done (like me and a few others) don’t get listened to too much and things roll along. In fact poorly designed reform rolls along and what begins as corners being cut turns into downright rorts. But things only come to a head (it seems) when they become worse again, and turn into outrages. Whereupon the media who have been soft-pedaling the issue rearrange their posture into one of righteous anger.

One recent example is the way in which the Cross-Sydney tunnel turned into something like a tax farming scheme. And the Review of Queensland Hospitals has turned up another example, where ‘case-mix’ type funding led to a cost cutting mentality not itself necessarily a bad thing, but obviously a bad thing if implemented without adequate regard for safety and quality of treatment and a bunch of other safeguards. Even allowing for the likelihood of a bit of a simplistic approach to the issue from the Commissioner, his comments seem pretty telling.

Some excerpts follow beneath the fold:
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That old boy scout joke about the person looking for his shilling where the light was best, rather than where he’d lost it, is so funny (partly) because it’s such a good take on human psychology. And any good joke about a the psychological foibles of someone acting alone is likely to be an even better joke about groups of people.

I think thinking about regulation needs to be very strongly divided between stopping serious wrongdoing and ‘guiding’ the law abiding. Alas, that’s not what we do. In an area close to my heart, consumer groups are constantly bemoaning all sorts of very nasty financial practices which hurt their own constituents. The resulting cry that ‘something must be done’ ends up with more (almost invariably) silly regulation for the law abiding.

As Amanda Vanstone gave me a nice (though somewhat bizarre) ‘hook’ on which to sally forth on a matter I’d posted about here a few weeks ago, I took up the bait in this week’s column.

I tried to check the facts as closely as possible. The Department of Transport were very helpful, confirming in short order there policy of letting all people who don’t consent to airport screening for traces of explosives go home so they can plan their next trip to the airport after a proper scrub up.

ASIC unfortunately is an altogether different kettle of fish. Try ringing them to talk to someone who knows what’s happening the way one would with most government departments or large companies and you are asked if you’re a journalist or [just] a member of the public.

A while back (on another matter) I answered the latter, and was told someone would ring me back but they never did. On persevering I said I was writing a column and the person then said ‘I thought you said you weren’t a journalist’ and became even more triumphantly unhelpful.

On this occasion I started out saying I was writing a column. I was then put through to a ‘media person’ who couldn’t answer my questions. The media people have a fine time sounding very proper and saying that they couldn’t possibly answer any questions about ASIC’s conduct because ‘the matter (its always a ‘matter’) is subject to legal proceedings’.

Anyway, on my persevering, I got a more senior media person who said the same things, and then another media person who said the same things, and then another call from her saying that someone who was in the area would ring me back. Alas, no such luck. So they can’t say I didn’t try . . . Here’s the column.
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Francis Wheen

Francis Wheen was fun to listen to on LNL, though his targets are pretty easy ones. Targets are more fun when shared. I posted on Demos a while back and here is Wheen on one of its most prominent alumni on whose book I also commented.

Thin air is solid

Charles Leadbeater’s book Living on Thin Air (1999), a starry-eyed guide to the “weightless economy”, was described by Peter Mandelson as “a blueprint for what a radical modernising project will entail in years to come”. The dustjacket also carried a tribute from Tony Blair, hailing Leadbeater as “an extraordinarily interesting thinker” whose book “raises criticial questions for Britain’s future”. Three years later, after the pricking of the dotcom bubble, industry secretary Patricia Hewitt admitted that “industrial policy in [Labour's] first term of office was mistaken, placing too much emphasis on the dotcom economy at the expense of Britain’s manufacturing base…The idea of Living on Thin Air was so much hot air.” Tactfully, she forgot to mention that the chief hot-air salesman had been her own leader.

I love my beer. I don’t think this is inherently funny. And it doesn’t mean I like getting drunk (just the early stages). Though I’m in no great danger of becoming an alco, I would not find it easy to go without my one (and occasionally two) stubbies of Coopers or sometimes more exotic beer before dinner.

Now I can tell people that it might also help to prevent cancer. Like Paul Keating experiencing that moment of weightlessless at the top of one’s trajectory on a trampoline, I can pretty much feel those cancer cells dying as I relax into my yummy Coopers.

Courtesy of Slashdot.