Beer drinkers from all over Europe met recently in Brussels to discuss the medical advantages of drinking beer, a beverage praised over the years by artists and writers but rarely by scientists. As a result, those who enjoy a pint at the Adam and Eve from time to time are not always aware that beer, taken in moderation, has the same advantages as other drinks plus one or two of its own.

Beer contains antioxidants, so the beneficial effects of drinking on the cardiovascular system are not confined to wine.

Chaucer, Housman, Shakespeare, Dickens, Brendan Behan and Dylan Thomas have all praised beer in their writings, and Samuel Johnson even ran a brewery for a time, but their high regard for beer was not so much for its good effect on the physique as for its influence on their psyche and on the community in which they lived.

Unlike those literary figures, the scientists who met in Brussels under the chairmanship of Professor Jonathan Powell, of the Medical Research Council human nutrition unit in Cambridge, were largely concerned with the influence of beer on human health.

Professor Powell said that the media and the public had tended to focus on the advantages of wine drinking in moderation. In his opinion there is increasing evidence that the benefits of moderate drinking are more related to the alcohol, whatever the nature of the drink, than to a particular beverage. Beer also contains nutrients and other properties that encourage good health.

In a controlled study in Germany, it was found that people who drank beer in moderation were less likely to develop coronary heart disease than those who drank other drinks.

Not only did the beer drinkers have better protection from heart attacks, but there was supporting evidence for beer’s cardio-protective effect and for its help in altering the ratio of beneficial high-density lipoprotein cholesterol to the pernicious low-density cholesterol.

There were also beneficial changes to the platelets — particles in the blood involved in clotting — and in the amount of fibrinogen, another factor in clotting, present in the blood.

As the average beer is only a third of the strength of the average wine, the ease with which people can drink too much is less. There may be other characteristics in the lifestyle of the beer-drinking fraternity that are difficult to measure but may contribute to the apparent benefits of beer drinking.

Earlier work among beer drinkers in the Czech Republic found that those men with the lowest risk of having a heart attack drank between seven and 15 pints a week. Another study, from Australia, investigated the drinking habits of 3,000 people in their seventies over the previous ten years and found that those who drank one or two beers a day had a 20 per cent lower risk of dying of heart disease than those who were teetotal or drank to excess.

What is more, the advantages of moderate beer drinking are not confined to the heart. Danish research has revealed that beer drinkers suffer less frequently from kidney stones, and it is now becoming accepted that drinking beer in moderation reduces the incidence of diabetes and osteoporosis, although drinking to excess may increase the risk of both.

Beer drinkers are convinced that their tipple’s wholesome ingredients, including malted barley, hops and yeast, contribute to a healthy balanced diet. Beer is rich in many vitamins of the B group and in such trace elements as magnesium but is low in both iron and calcium.

Beer drinking in moderation is not even responsible for a large belly: glass for glass, beer is less fattening than apple juice, milk or yoghurt.