…to crib a line from Glenn Reynolds. io9 wonders “Can you live on beer alone?” Judging by the example of my freshman year roommate I would have thought the answer was “Yes” but, apparently, it isn’t. If the dehydration doesn’t get you, the scurvy will.
There’s beer and then there’s beer. Apparently, that stuff could be drank/eaten with a spoon (if there were spoons thereabouts).
Interesting article, but it repeats one of the “myths” that I dislike by equating light beers with “reduced alcohol beers.” Many of the common “light beers” have about 4.2% alcohol, compared with non-light versions with 5.0%. I can’t imagine that makes much of a difference until you are reaching for your twelfth beer of a sitting. I think “the purpose” of the light beer is to reduce the residual sugars from the malt which give it its taste and calories.
Also, I think early Americans were intoxicated a lot, including the children. Foreign observers noted this.
Not just early Americans, PD. I think that persisted right up to Prohibition. In August, Missouri when Prohibition was enacted there was one brewery, winery, or saloon in the town for every man, woman, or child.
We built this country with the jug, the smoke and the gun.
An appropriate picture of Jayne Cobb in the Canton bar. They actually drank a substance alot like what the Egyptian slave’s drank…well according to the episode.
Damn the Fox Network for cancelling that show….
The story also made me think of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, where employees got to drink free beer all day long until the mid-eighties. The author is way too skeptical of the idea or ability of workers to perform manual labor inebriated.
“In August, Missouri when Prohibition was enacted there was one brewery, winery, or saloon in the town for every man, woman, or child.”
Heh. Stingy Missourians…
Now in Indiana…….
Several months ago Schuler informed me that dogs don’t get scurvy, as their livers (IIRC) can create Vitamin C. (It was something like that, I’m in a hurry so I can’t look it up, and I’m sure he’ll correct me.) Apparently, there’s
an appa gene for that. To me that seems like a useful gene to add to the human genome, assuming no tricky side-effects.Icepick- it’s not only dogs, but most nonprimate mamals that can produce endogenous vitamin C. Interestingly, apparently we still have the gene but it is nonfunctional.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-gulonolactone_oxidase
Yes, that’s what it was. Dogs came up specifically because the phrase “scurvy dogs” had been brought up.
So basically, the problem is solved with bad beer and a slice of lime?
Bud Light lime!
Steve