This is a rather large chunk of news to swallow whole: Anheuser-Busch has been sold to the Belgian brewer InBev for $52 billion.

Deep breath…

Fifty-two BILLION dollars. Wow.

You know, a billion is a really large number. Try to get your head around it. If you were forced to spend a million dollars a month, it would take you over 83 years to spend a billion dollars.

Now times that by 52.

I don’t know, but it almost seems like you’d be able to buy an entire European country for that amount of money. Doesn’t it? And so who did InBev, makers of all sorts of wonderful (and some not so wonderful) European beers decide to buy? Monaco? Portugal? The State of Road Island?

No.

They bought the biggest, most bloated brewery that makes the worst beer on the face of this Earth.

One can only hope they dig deep into Anheuser-Busch and do something to improve the beer. I mean, even just a little!

One would hope, right? Especially after spending 52 BILLION DOLLARS for it.

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There is, it seems, a beer called Rubbel Sexy Lager that features labels decorated with scantly clad sex kittens whom, with a coin and a bit of scratch-off effort, you can undress to reveal their stunningly desirable female naughty bits. Because of this, it’s been pulled off the market.

In a newspaper interview, the head of industry regulator The Portman Group said, “Some people might think this is harmless fun but there is a serious issue involved. The industry has set itself strict marketing rules and this drink has fallen short of those high standards.”

Excuse me? Hello? We are talking about the beer industry here, right? Or have I somehow stumbled off into an alternate dimension? Has the Portman Group ever seen a Superbowl ad? In the news reports they claim they fear the name of the beer and the scantily-clad model could lead drinkers to associate the product with sexual success. Is that not what just about every single TV beer commercial would have you believe?

I am calling this a case of out-and-out hypocrisy.

It’s perfectly okay to promote your beer with labels depicting demons, skeletons, and the occasionally busty barmaid, but not the exquisite artistry of a unclothed naked female? That strikes a nerve. What else can you expect, though, from a society that accepts death and violence as perfectly acceptable but sexuality is dirty, nasty, and bad bad bad.

If it weren’t for sexuality, and probably a good amount of beer, I’ll wager that no one at the Portman Group would ever have been born.

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Drinking beer in moderation — one a day for women and two a day for men — can deliver protection against heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and dementia.

We’ve known about the benefits of wine for years, but studies are now showing that beer is even better, and it’s because of the ingredients.

One of course is the alcohol, the benefits of which it shares with wine.

Another is vitamin B6. Beer drinkers show a 30% increase of vitamin B6 in their blood. Wine and other spirits also give you a B6 boost, but not quite as much, and for not as long.

The real clincher is the hops. Hops contain a unique anti-cancer micronutrient called xanthohumol which hinders tumor growth, inhibits enzymes that activate cancer cells, and also helps make other unhealthy compounds more water-soluble so that your body can get rid of them … instead of having them hanging around and causing you health problems.

The best beers are usually ales, porters, and stouts, because they have more hops and therefore much higher levels of xanthohumol.

Oregon’s microbrews rank particularly high in this regard.

So rejoice my fellow beer lovers! Your beer drinking is no longer a vice — that is, as long as you can keep it to one or two beers a day.

Any more than that and the health benefits are outweighed by the risks of overindulgence.

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