An NUS Student Has Created A 'Healthy' Beer That Can Boost Your Immunity
Could beer become the next superfood?
By Sheryll Paul — 03 Jul 2017, 05:24 PM
Chan Mei Zhi Alcine, a student at the National University of Singapore (NUS), came up with a pretty unconventional idea for her final-year project
She's invented a type of beer that could potentially be good for your health
She worked together with a professor from the university and spent a total of nine months perfecting the alcoholic beverage.
The healthy beer contains probiotics; live strains of bacteria that are good for your body, especially your digestive system.
Chan herself is a lover and frequent consumer of drinks containing probiotics. She noticed once that almost all probiotic foods and drinks were dairy products, an upsetting fact to people who suffer from lactose intolerance.
“The health benefits of probiotics are well known. While good bacteria are often present in food that have been fermented, there are currently no beers in the market that contain probiotics. As a believer of achieving a healthy diet through consuming probiotics, this is a natural choice for me when I picked a topic for my final-year project," Chan told the National University of Singapore.
Every 100ml of this beer will contain 1 billion probiotics
It is recommended that one serving of probiotics should contain 1 billion probiotics, so Chan's creation follows health guidelines perfectly.
But what makes this beer so much healthier than regular beer?
Many types of beer actually do contain some level of probiotics. Beer goes through a fermentation process, just like foods such as yoghurt, kimchi and tempeh. And fermented products will likely contain probiotics.
This is often an argument many fellow beer-lovers bring up when it comes to debating the nutritional value of beer. However, the types of beer already in the market don't contain nearly the amount of probiotics necessary to label it a 'healthy drink'. It would be like calling the walk from your desk to the toilet your daily workout.
This new beer is the first to contain this many probiotics.
Chan and her professor are planning to introduce their product to the market soon
They believe their beer has commercial value and have already gotten a Japanese company interested in them.
However, this doesn't mean you can drink as much beer as you want
Though the beer contains a healthy amount of probiotics, drinking too much alcohol can be fatal. The general daily recommendation for alcoholic beverages in a day is 2-3 drinks for men and 1-2 for women.