Writers should never be left to their own devices.<\/p>\n
This morning, I saw an article at Slate<\/a> that asked the important question of our times — How Long Can You Survive on Beer Alone?<\/a><\/p>\n As it happens, one can live for about two months on a diet consisting only of beer and water, at which point scurvy will start to set in.<\/p>\n The proximate cause for this revelation? J. Wilson of Iowa<\/a> gave up food for Lent, and subsisted for forty-six days on a diet consisting solely of beer<\/a>. No, that’s not nonsensical; as it turns out, a German monastic order did the same in the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n Naturally, we writers at the office had to kick this around, especially when we learned that Wilson lost a fair bit of weight<\/a> from his beer-only diet.<\/p>\n “We’re writers,” I said. “Drinking at all hours is socially acceptable for us. Society expects us to be drunks and alcoholics.”<\/p>\n So we had to discuss which kind of beer would be best — and at what point would it be cheaper to buy groceries and eat food than to consume multiple beers?<\/p>\n Since beer is not nutritionally rounded (though Guinness is better than most<\/a>), would dietary supplements be necessary?<\/p>\n If Wilson drank four or five beers a day, what should be consumed at the traditional meal times? One for breakfast, two for lunch, and two for dinner? Or replace lunch with one at mid-morning and one at early-afternoon?<\/p>\n Of course, that led into the messy question of whether the beer diet would be feasible in the modern office environment.<\/p>\n Then, how long should one stay on the diet? Do one month on the diet and lose thirty to forty pounds, go back on food for a month, and repeat the diet as necessary until the ideal weight is reached?<\/p>\n This is what writers do when they put their heads together. They come up with crazy yet workable plans.<\/p>\n Guinness is the way I’d go, were I to do something like this. Guinness is good for you, after all. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Writers should never be left to their own devices. This morning, I saw an article at Slate that asked the important question of our times — How Long Can You Survive on Beer Alone? As it happens, one can live for about two months on a diet consisting only of beer and water, at whichContinue reading “On Writers and the Beer Diet”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[327,490],"class_list":["post-5742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-beer","tag-guinness","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}