Beer: It’s not just for breakfast anymore. In fact, a brew a day may keep the doctor away.

The oft-demeaned sudsy liquid has developed some new, highly educated fans in recent months. Beer has been praised suddenly as a mood elevator as well as a preventer of heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, diabetes and dementia. It’s practically a health food.

Killjoy Julie Bradford, editor of All About Beer Magazine, says, “Well, we’re not saying that beer is the new wonder drug or suggesting that people take two beers and call us in the morning.” But she says evidence points to beer being as beneficial as well-trumpeted red wine.

We all have to remember that these benefits are for “moderate” drinking, defined as one drink a day for women and up to two a day for men. Experts tell us that 12 beers a day is not 12 times more effective than one a day. Studies show that binge drinking, the consumption of six or more drinks in a day, offers no benefits and puts drinkers at increased risk for obesity and certain types of cancers, liver failure and stroke.

My new favorite Texan, Norman D. Kaplan, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, has studied alcohol’s impact on health for 40 years (why can’t I get a job like that?). In his study, he reported that “the benefits of drinking moderate amounts of alcohol is well beyond contention.”

In studying 70,000 female nurses (why can’t I get a job like that?), Dr. Kaplan cites that those who drank moderate amounts of beer had less hypertension than did nurses who drank either wine or spirits. Another Kaplan study showed that 128,934 adult male beer drinkers among the group were at a statistically significant lower risk of coronary-artery disease than were men who drank red wine, white wine or spirits.

Our boy Kaplan admits that he does not understand why beer is so beneficial, but it may help increase bone density, decreasing risk of fractures. Beer also could raise so-called “good cholesterol” levels in some people, helping to ward off coronary-heart disease and related afflictions such as dementia.

It gets better, at least for beer drinkers.

Kaplan said beer is practically a health food because it is rich in B-vitamins and folates (a form of water-soluble B-vitamin found in green leafy vegetables), both of which help keep homocysteine blood levels in check. Homocysteine is a chemical that, in elevated amounts, has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease.

Forget red wine.

Kaplan doesn’t like red wine, either. He said, “Beer drinking has equal or perhaps more benefit,” and told the Wall Street Journal that “the wine people have done a major snow job” in peddling the notion that wine is superior to beer or spirits.

Its not like the $55 billion a year beer industry needed any help with its 80 million guzzlers. But the staffers at the National Beer Wholesalers Association, of Alexandria, Va., actually conducted a seminar on “health and beer” and issued a self-congratulatory press release that declared: “Eat right, exercise and drink a beer a day may be the way to keep the doctor away.

On its Web site, the NBWA beer boys claim that beer has been an important part of life in virtually every society on Earth. It was brewed by the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians and Chinese. It has been used in religious rituals, depicted on coins, honored in epic sagas. Through all the centuries, in moments of triumph and celebration and fellowship, no drink has contributed more to man’s enjoyment than beer, according to the Web site.

The beer boys continue.

They claim that the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock because they ran out of beer. An entry in the diary of a Mayflower passenger explains the unplanned landing at Plymouth Rock: “We could not now take time for further search … our victuals being much spent, especially our beer…”

That may have been the last time America’s settlers ran short of beer. They soon learned from their Indian neighbors how to make beer from maize. Local breweries sprouted up throughout the colonies, and experienced brewmasters were eagerly recruited from London. By 1770, the American brewing industry was so well established that George Washington, Patrick Henry, and other patriots argued for a boycott of English beer imports. The Boston Tea Party almost became the Boston Beer Party, according to the beer boys.

One beer researcher said that on Captain Cook’s ships, beer contributed as many calories to the sailors’ diets as biscuits and meat combined.

Another claimed that man first left the cave to have a beer. Anthropologist Dr. Solomon Katz theorizes that when man learned to ferment grain into beer more than 10,000 years ago, it became one of his most important sources of nutrition. But in order to have a steady supply of beer, it was necessary to have a steady supply of beer’s ingredients. Man had to give up his nomadic ways, settle down, and begin farming. And once he did, civilization was just a stone’s throw away, Katz claims.

Lets pause to give thanks to beer, the latest health food.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.