Health-related aspects of beer: A review

Beer is consumed worldwide and is a universally popular beverage. This is due to its sensory, nutritional, and medicinal properties. Surveys have shown that light to moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages (including beer) with relatively low alcohol contents can provide various favorable impacts on humans' health, including nutritional benefits, anti-mutagenic and anti-carcinogenic effects, reduction of cardiovascular disease (cardioprotective effect), hypolipidemic effect, immune system stimulation, anti-osteoporosis effect, and reducing risk of dementia. On the contrary, consumption of these beverages in excessive amounts results in some heath disorders, such as allergy induction, increase in the plasma concentration of uric acid, mutation and cancer induction, increase in the risk of dementia, obesity, and some social misbehaviors. Health-related aspects of beer (both positive and negative impacts) have been comprehensively reviewed in this article.