“BEER, AND YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DRINKING! MEDITATE PEOPLE, MEDITATE!” IN A 1980 COMMERCIAL, RENZO ARBORE INVITED ITALIANS TO DRINK THIS EXCELLENT AND GENUINE BEVERAGE… WHAT ARE STATISTICS TODAY? ASSOBIRRA ANNOUNCED: 63% OF ITALIANS DRINK BEER”

“Beer, and you know what you’re drinking! Meditate people, meditate”. It was 1980 when Renzo Arbore invited Italians to drink the genuine and excellent beverage as old as the history of mankind, in a memorable campaign for the beer industry. Thirty years later, AssoBirra, the Italian association of beer and malt, is celebrating the anniversary of the famous commercial and bringing back the historic slogan. The slogan will christen a new interactive communication campaign that aims to discover whether people today really know what they’re drinking.
“Today, almost a generation later, we have come a long way,” explains Piero Perron, President of AssoBirra. “Consider the expansion of the offer and the increase in the quality of beer, or the tendency to drink beer before or during meals, in the Mediterranean tradition. Doxa, the Italian Research Institute, has conducted studies that confirm Italians still have a lot to learn about this product and its culture. To break down these barriers that a significant number of Italians have in approaching this natural drink as old as the history of mankind, we decided to re-launch the message in today’s language, supported by the valuable contribution of many esteemed experts”.

The study conducted by Doxa / AssoBirra in March 2010 on a sample of 1,000 adults representative of the Italian adult population “would send our compatriots back to school "to repeat the test” as they still have wrong or confused ideas about beer. And yet, it is drunk by almost two out of three Italians (63%) and of these 49% drink beer once or more a week. We are talking about 32 million people who “love blonde (beers)”? But still don’t know them as well as they should!

One Italian in two (49%) wrongly believes that this drink was invented in the Middle Ages, in Northern Europe, even though 79% are “saved by the bell” since they consider beer compatible with the Mediterranean lifestyle. The answer comes from the food anthropologist, Sergio Grasso: “It is absolutely false. Beer was invented 50 centuries ago in Mesopotamia and spread first to Egypt and then throughout the Mediterranean, before going north to more favorable climatic conditions for cereal crops. The fact remains that the homeland, history and tradition of beer is in the Mediterranean; and so are the cereals - the basic ingredients of beer and our diet, considered the healthiest in the world”. 73% of Italians, and this is the biggest misconception, never (or rarely) put beer on the table, at home, because it continues to be a victim of the cliché that it goes only with pizza. Other well-rooted prejudices (from 15-20 million Italians) say that beer bloats and makes you gain weight.
In particular, for 4 out of 10 Italians say beer bloats, although one Italian out of 2 (53%) prefers beer to other sweet or carbonated beverages. What really matters is - besides the golden rule of moderation - knowing how to pour beer properly to make it foam. The correct amount of foam in the glass, among the best known indicators of proper pouring, eliminates the excess carbon dioxide avoiding it ending up in the stomach, explains Carlo Cannella, biochemical nutritionist “that beer bloats is an urban myth. Provided, of course one does not exaggerate in quantity, as they do in northern Europe. When beer is poured into a glass, the foam is released. It is made of carbon dioxide bubbles that develop naturally during the fermentation of the cereals. Incidentally, due to the process of filtration and pasteurization, the yeasts responsible for fermentation are no longer present in most of the beers we drink”.