The question of their value as a probiotic just occurred to me the other day when I was drinking something with a particularly yeasty note coming from the can.

Same reason why buying aluminum extrusions and matching fasteners costs the same as buying a 3D printer and dismantling it to recover the same parts

I think your comment is valuable in pointing out that the taxation scheme and law of beer often encompasses NA beer as well, when it shouldn’t, and in the end that very often hurts the adoption of and distribution possibilities of NA beer.

In other words, if NA beer was treated like a soda it would have a lot less pain in its GTM segment. NA beer can have some low amount of alcohol, but then again so can kombucha. Where I live (Austin, TX), kombucha is regulated like a soda, but NA beer is not. They are fundamentally quite similar (very low ABV fermented beverages) but regulated quite differently. They shouldn’t be - from the perspective of the governing body, NA beers should be treated as bioactive sodas, exactly how kombucha is currently treated. There is no justifiable reason to treat them otherwise

That's not so surprising, since probiotics are necessarily just the rare few bacteria we can grow on demand and fit into a pill. Doesn't mean alcohol is good for your microbiome.

Prebiotics and fiber are probably more effective kinds of supplements. But they'll give you gas so might make you unpopular.

Mostly use it to have it as something before I drink coffee not to have one on empty stomach.

> Does Lifeway Kefir contain any alcohol?

> No. We have formulated our kefir to not contain any alcohol and is safe for the whole family! If you’d like more information about our process, please email [email protected].

https://lifewaykefir.com/faq/

The whole world is alive with yeast. Without extreme levels of sterilization, all fermentation requires is time and sugar. I suspect that 0.5% comes from fermentation (possibly of the fruit before it’s even harvested/processed).

Personally, my sleep is too dramatically impacted from beer to make it a regular part of my week. Kefir, yogurt and veg seems equally as impactful and they don't make me feel suboptimal the next morning.

CZ and SH were employed by Tsingtao Brewery Co. Ltd. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.”

From the study:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37560062/

https://newsroom.uw.edu/media-coverage/there-no-safe-level-a...

I may not take quite as an extreme view as Hunter S. Thompson, but he was onto something when he wrote:

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!'"

No one should pressure you into having alcohol if it's not your choice, but it brings joy to other people's lives in moderation like many other things. If you ate BBQ or heavy desserts every day you'd probably die young in the hospital, too, but that doesn't make them something for everyone to totally avoid always. Many things technically take time off our lives, but are also the small joys which make life worth living in the first place. Balance is key.

This is probably the source btw, with a better summary and link to the actual Lancet article : https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...

Today, I don’t drink any alcohol appreciably. If drinking a beer over a week or so might help, I’d be interested in trying it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9966200/

Though there are plenty of other things that are good for gut health having nothing to do with beer. I don't know a lot about beer. I'm basically a non-drinker. But I do know a lot about gut health.

If you drink beer and you want to feel good about it, cool. I have no problem with that. But there are lots of other ways to support gut health if that is your real goal.

He lived into his late eighties.

About 70% of the immune system is located in the gut.

I think that's inaccurate. I think about 70 to 80 percent of your immune cells (not system) -- white blood cells, etc. -- are found in the gut.

Chalk it up to someone with a defective body wistfully looking at stories of "normal" people and knowing that's got no bearing on my life.

But thanks for trying to be helpful. It's a bad habit of mine to do similar and is often met with open hostility which still mystifies me to this day. I guess some people -- like moi -- never learn.

  if it came in a green or brown bottle