Long drinks lists can be overwhelming, but if your liver got to choose, it would probably go with something brimming with hops. Yep, just like the majority of craft beer drinkers, it would probably grab an IPA.
Researchers from the German Friedrich Schiller University Jena recently found preliminary evidence that hops damage the liver less than liquor and beer without hops.
“Our data suggest that hops content in beer is at least in part responsible for the less damaging effects of beer on the liver,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism.
The researchers used three groups of female mice for the study: mice that drank hoppy beer, mice that drank beer without hops, and mice that drank straight ethanol. A full 12 hours after consumption, the researchers went into their little mice livers to see the impact of each type. The mice that stuck to the hoppy stuff had less fat buildup in their livers than the mice that were forced to down zero-hopped beer and the hard stuff.
Read full study here.