Coffee, tea or beer?

MONROE - John Christison was surprised but pleased. But Dave Murphy had known all along what a panel of nutritionists took until last week to determine: beer is good food. “A pork chop in every can,” Murphy pronounced from his prime location at the noisy bar of Ogdensburg’s Boro Pub. “And Captain Morgan’s even better for you.” Christison, the owner of Yesterday’s in Monroe, was less eager to hock his business’s staple. “Obviously we’ve got to think it’s a good thing,” he said of the study’s findings, but he was a bit suspicious and wondered if the study might be referring to low-carb beers. He was thrown, in fact, by the idea that he may no longer need to sell the benefits of the brew, and, out of habit perhaps, proclaimed that Guinness has fewer carbs than regular beers. But now, thanks to a new scientific study, he can declare that beer is nutritional - not just less fattening as previously thought. Two bottles or cans of beer a day are, says the study, better for a man than a can of soda. For women, it’s one bottle of beer. Some folks enjoying Happy Hour at the Boro Pub and other Sussex County water holes seemed intent on making sure they had their daily allotment filled through August. No question about it, said Andy Sickel, the bartender at the Lenape Lodge in Andover, if beer is better for you than milk, “I gotta be the healthiest man around.” “Yeah,” offered one of his customers, Anthony Nepa, “but corn flakes just don’t taste the same.” The guidelines on what to drink were published on March 8 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and were the result of a study commissioned by Lipton Tea. The scientists involved said they were given no instructions and were free to come to whatever conclusions their research dictated. Lipton was delighted with the results, which called for Americans to drink as much as 40 ounces of unsweetened tea or coffee a day. So was Leslie Lutz, owner of the Calico Rose Cafe in Hamburg, one of Sussex County’s few tea rooms. Lutz hadn’t heard of the study, but when told of it, she began loading a visiting reporter with stacks of literature about the benefits of the many varieties of tea, about two dozen of which she sells in her establishment. “I think it’s good for people who maybe did not enjoy tea as much as they should,” she said, rattling off a litany of brews, from Botswana Blossom to Kiva Pear Green Mint. Companies that market fruit juices, soda and milk were less pleased, as the panel recommended severely limiting those liquids. Diet soda fared better, getting the green light for up to 32 ounces a day. Over at the Sparta Dairy Queen, the counter staff chose not to speculate on whether beer is better than a vanilla shake for a good reason - they get paid to sell dairy products. Not even the customers, including a teacher from Sparta, could be persuaded to part with their names. Apparently, she didn’t want word getting around school that she was the kind of wild and crazy woman who kicked back on Friday night with a chocolate sundae. A girl of about eight, who was getting a Blizzard with her mother, didn’t want to be photographed with it - it’s just the kind of picture that could get posted on the Internet and come back to haunt you. But, with a little prodding, she finally opined that ice cream is better than French fries. No such problems with the bars and the beer drinkers, who were more than willing to discuss the salubrious benefits of barley malt and hops. Saturday afternoon at the Lamp Post in Vernon, Ewa Wolkowycki and her friend, Maria Taras, stopped by for refreshments. Wolkowycki opted for a large capuccino while Taras sipped a Heineken. Having immigrated from Poland, where people don’t get as excited about alcohol as Americans tend to, the pair were unsurprised to hear that beer wasn’t so bad - or wine, for that matter. They’d known it all along. “We don’t know how long we’ll live,” explained Wolkowycki, who has one glass of wine with dinner each day. “Why not enjoy life?” Why not, indeed? Now, at last, there is a scientific study to support what Benjamin Franklin said more than 200 years ago: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”