Comments on: Is Beer Fattening?

By: Anna

Anna — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:51:29 +0000

I don't know whether beer is like a meal, but it's definitely making ME gain weight.. especially the day after. The interesting thing is that usually two days after partying and drinking 5 – 7 pints (which is a lot for a girl) my weight goes back to normal — especially if I've done some moderate exercise the day after drinking.

But I'm starting to wonder whether I shouldn't switch to vodka, which is what my family drinks. We're Polish. Beer is just such a great summer drink..

By: paulo1eye{i}

paulo1eye{i} — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:44:11 +0000

Very interesting and Informative, cheers bock and posters

By: EssoDee

EssoDee — Fri, 07 May 2010 09:37:59 +0000

I think this is the funniest thread I've ever seen. Dean's sense of comic timing is absolutely impeccable, and Irate Chemists withering response is perfect. I'm still laughing.

Bravo to both.

By: Irate Chemist

Irate Chemist — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:36:18 +0000

Its good to see that he has interests beyond the death of Gerry Ryan.

By: Bock

Bock — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:29:35 +0000

Dean is a straggler from the Gerry Ryan row. What do you expect?

Pay no attention to him.

By: Irate Chemist

Irate Chemist — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:32:45 +0000

Thats right Dean, its all piss. Disregard the above discussion.

By: Dean Hogan

Dean Hogan — Sun, 02 May 2010 00:58:30 +0000

It all turns to piss anyway

By: Irate Chemist

Irate Chemist — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:29:32 +0000

Scotlyn, either I misunderstood your original post or you're changing the goal posts. If there were no bacteria on Earth I agree with you that life would probably cease, although I can't say for sure. I also agree that bacteria in our gut are vital to us in a lot of ways, its hard to tell if we could survive without them at all(in our gut)-its a purely hypothetical situation, we would have to be completely sterile. We would also have to comsume the nutrients they give us, like in the case of vitamin K, which I discussed earlier, I can't say whether we could or not, it would be a very complex balance-I could only speculate. I do however stand over what I have said about digestion-if you have a leaving cert biology book to hand, you can follow the pathways of food that we consume, how its dealt with by our digestion etc. I don't think that we rely on bacteria exclusively for the digestion of our food, although they do have a very important input, I have never said the contrary. I suppose saying that we cannot digest all of our food without them is close enough.

When you said you were clarifying my comment on bacteria being the moon I interpreted that as you correcting what I had said. I do apologise for using the word living and happily, they were neither dead nor alive (dormant) and they never sent me a post-card so I couldn't say if they were happy. I do however think it is amazing that they survived without an atmosphere, to protect them from cosmic rays. I don't know if they suffered any genetic damage, more than likely they did. But they survived and that was my point. Does it matter where they came from?

In humans, like most animals, we begin our digestion with enzymes we produce ourselves in mouth, stomach and small intestine. There are a lot of bacteria in the mouth, but only relatively small amounts in the stomach and small intestine.

I was referring to the post in which you said that bacteria do the preliminary breakdown. In our mouth?
I gave the example of carbohydrates and amylase. The only bacteria I know of in our mouth is plaque, that feeds on sugars we consume and produce and acidic metabolite that degrades our teeth. There are doubtless more, but any that help digestion in our mouth? I thought the majority of our bacteria are in our large/small intestine, not relatively small amounts as you say above?

When I was writing my last post I miss-spelled the word trillion as billion but my calculations were correct as far as I can see. Get a calculator and try it with the numbers I have above, I get orders of a billion trillion versus a hundered million trillion. The total human genetic material is ten orders more than the genetic material of bacteria in/on us. Not 100 fold as you reported. I also used the largest bacterial genome I could find in the calculation, this is a maximum figure.

Just one fascinating example includes the seven or so viral insertions now considered to have played a part in allowing mammals to develop the habit of hosting our babies in the womb

When you were talking about mammalian wombs, were you waxing all lyrical and speculative about this tantalising bit of information or were you extrapolating the evidence? The article you linked came to the conclusion that this gene insertion enhanced mammalian reproduction.

My problem with your post on virus acting as vectors was not concerning said, thats established. Im not aware, as per my last post, of viruses as acting as vectors for bacteria. Maybe they do.

By: Scotlyn

Scotlyn — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:43:22 +0000

Ok, just one more thing –
The first part of the paragraph on viral insertions into mammalian gene sequences that control the development of the placenta was based on evidence described in articles like this one.

The second part of the paragraph was just me waxing all lyrical and speculative about this tantalising bit of information. (Having been called upon twice in this life to perform my own mammalian duty to carry a semi-stranger within me). Is that allowed?

By: Scotlyn

Scotlyn — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:27:09 +0000

Sorry – getting back to the math – if there are 1 trillion cells in the human body (that belong to it), then there are 10x that number of bacterial cells – that is to say 10 trillion (not 10 billion as you say). Obviously the calculation is skewed by the fact that many bacterial genes will be widespread among many individuals. I trust the bacteriologists that have done the calculation have worked it out in all its detail, including such complications.

Also, I will amend my statement re gut bacteria to the following "we cannot digest ALL of our food without them… and this with the proviso that I suspect more and more evidence of bacterial help in parts of the gut other than the colon will emerge in future. Such bacteria are still very hard to culture or study in vivo."

Would be easier to discuss the essentialness of bacteria to multicellular life if you could spell out the "basic" nature in which this is wrong.