eli5: How come alcohol doesn’t have the health benefits that other fermented foods have?

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eli5: How come alcohol doesn’t have the health benefits that other fermented foods have?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Fermented foods have alcohol in them because bacteria eat up the sugars in the food and produce alcohol. These bacteria arent removed so whenever you eat the fermented food, you consume some of that bacteria. That’s what gived you the health benefits, the bacteria adds to your body microbiome or produces some compound that has a net benefit. Basically it’s a probiotic.

Pure alcohol is just that. Nothing else added to it. The alcohol is made by yeast, and the yeast is separated from the final product. That’s why there’s no added health benefit. Its basically alcohol in water with some additives, your body will process the alcohol, give you the depressive effects, and then eventually excrete the metabolites.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Fermentation itself has a very broad definition in that it just means enzymatic change in some way (of the food) mostly by microorganisms. It does not actually mean the creation a singular product that has some health benefit, most of the health benefits of fermented foods come from the food that is being fermented and the fermentation is mostly a method of preserving the food through production of lactic acid.

In the case of production of alcoholic beverages fermentation is just the process by which the alcohol is created – and alcohol simply does not have ‘the health benefits’ other foods may have. It really doesn’t matter how a chemical is created it only matter what effect it has on your body…