Is Guinness Good For You? – Have an Allergy Friendly St. Patrick’s Day!

1st of all Happy St. Patrick’s Day –in advance because I’m not planning on working on our National Holiday after all!

This is really just a quick little mid-week message to keep the food-allergy, dietary-aware, free-from population on the right track on our up-coming big day of breaking your Lenten vows and throwing caution to the wind!.... As we all know, food allergies and vegetarianism and veganism don’t always bend for such trivialities as saints driving snakes out of a country and teaching the trinity based on the clover 1571 years ago... If you’re digestion and beliefs are good with that then ‘Cheers!’... or rather: ‘Sláinte!’... However, if not, then read on…
What is Guinness anyway? Here in Ireland you probably won’t see any green food colouring marring the ‘beauty’ of the pure thing (beer or Guinness alike). Although some of the more feminine among us are allowed a splash of black currant cordial in the black stuff to ease the bitterness (personally I need half a pint of blackcurrant to muster the taste... either that or just keep drinking it to keep the bitter aftertaste away! But who am I to comment on one of the world’s most successful beer brands?!).. So where were we... Oh Yes,

1st, Guinness is a stout.

2nd, the ingredients are these:

- Water
- Barley
- Hops
- Brewer’s yeast
and
- ‘Isinglass Finings’

Yes, that’s right; they use the dried ‘swim bladders’ of fish for the clarification process... Wikipedia says that Isinglass is a form of collagen and that the method of use is such that it would be rare that any isinglass would actually remain in the beer itself.

So there you have it… Definitely NOT:
- Vegan
- Wheat free
- Gluten free
- Yeast free

Up for debate on Vegetarian & Fish free (I’ll let you make your own call on that one)

But Guinness should be safe for:
- Dairy free
- Egg free
- Corn free
- Nut free
- Soya free
- Potato free - probably one of the few things on St. Patrick’s Day to NOT contain potato! ;)
and the rest of them…

Oh, and interestingly, in my readings I discovered that a pint of Guinness only has 198 calories which is less than a pint of skimmed milk!... or so they say… So I guess that all of those beer bellies are from the fish and chips after the Guinness rather than the Guinness itself!

So have a Happy St. Patrick’s Day and don’t drink too much, and remember that the digestion troubles, the skin breakouts, the cold-sores, the eczema, the hives and the rest of it are really not worth it.. Especially when you put it all together on top of the hang-over!

P.S. Where can you get a pint Guinness? The answer is basically anywhere for about €4-€5.50! The streets will be flowing and the pubs will be CRAMMED! ~(or so we expect, it is a recession afterall)