The way ale was traditionally brewed in N. Europe meant it had useful carbs and trace elements (which latter the working man's diet did not have enough of once they shifted into towns during the Industrial Revolution) - the diet there became that of bad bread, meat scraps, and increasingly, tea instead of the villages' old barrels of local brew and the contents of veg gardens and hen coops. The health of the population consequently suffered for generations. Of course, such ales were entirely unlike the gaseous piss that this vanity-addled fuckwit no doubt likes to use to wash down the calorific garbage necessary to keep that 'set point' rising.