For a joke, some men will cradle their bulging midriffs and laugh about the investment it’s taken to grow a pot belly. “Beer isn’t cheap,” they’ll say. That’s true, but the financial cost of a beer belly is not as consequential as the considerable health costs. For men, a growing waistline can contribute to a range of life-limiting conditions including heart disease, cancers, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.
No wonder then that as we become more aware of the risks, the joke is no longer funny and men who want healthier lives are increasingly looking to shed their beer bellies.
While beer bellies are associated with men who drink excess lager, a beer belly is just a fat belly. It’s not made of anything different to other fat bellies and non-beer drinkers can also develop what would classically be described as a beer belly.
Philip Chant, director of Bodyscan, a company that uses X-ray technology to measure the ratio of fat, muscle and bone in people’s bodies, says: “What we call a beer belly is just a fat belly. Beer bellies are typically associated with men, because men naturally store their fat around the middle, while women are more prone to store it around their hips, buttocks and thighs. Beer can certainly be a contributing factor because beer is calorific and excess calories lead to fat deposits, and as men get fatter, they build that fat around the middle.”
What constitutes a beer belly?
A beer belly can be a combination of both subcutaneous fat, the soft fat that sits under the skin, and visceral fat, which is more dangerous and packs around the organs. Your genetics largely dictate how and where your body will store fat.
“Some people will acquire more visceral fat than others” explains Chant. “Some don’t have to store much fat before they start storing it viscerally.”
In addition to belly fat, excess beer calories, or any other food or drink, can also cause men’s breasts to get bigger, often referred to as ‘man boobs’ or ‘moobs’. There is also an unconnected medical condition called gynaecomastia which causes breast tissue to grow and affects male long-term heavy drinkers who develop alcoholic liver disease. It is thought this is because the ethanol in alcohol may disrupt the synthesis of testosterone, while the phytoestrogens in alcohol cause an increase in oestrogen.
What causes a beer belly?
Simply put, a beer belly is caused by excess calories and if you drink a lot of alcohol, you are more likely to put on weight because alcohol is calorific. It contains seven calories a gram. Fat contains nine and protein and carbohydrates contain four. A pint of lager is around 180 calories, a pint of cider is 220, stout and ale are around 250. Beer is not the only culprit. Two large glasses of red wine equal almost 20 per cent of a man’s daily recommended intake of 2,500 calories. Beer also tends to be consumed along with other calorific foods such as bar snacks, curries and kebabs.