In Belgium the Leuvense Biertherapeuten vzw called at the start of the new school year to replace soft drinks with table beer. “The best alternative to soft drinks is water, but if you want taste as well then table beer is a much better choice than soft drinks. Only a few decades ago, for that matter, it was quite normal to serve table beer at school”, so says the VZW. The association thus set the cat among the pigeons and started up a fresh round of discussion on table beer. Opponents see the serving of table beer to children and teenagers as a first step towards alcohol consumption in later life. Drinking table beer is supposed to give young people the taste for beer too early. This my be compared with the Stepping Stone theory for drugs: begin with soft drugs such as cannabis and you will end up taking hard drugs such as cocaine or heroin.

There is less controversy about the concentration of alcohol in the blood. The concentration is so low that we may hardly even use the word influence. No alcohol was found in the blood of young subjects who drank 33 centilitres after 12 hours of fasting as part of an experiment. Table beer contains so little alcohol (only 1.1 percent) that there is no danger of addiction. Supporters of table beer claim that the brew is healthier than soft drinks. They have a point. Experiments have shown that table beer increases the insulin level in the body much less than soft drinks do and, therefore, entail less risk of obesity and cancer. The high consumption rate of soft drinks among children and teenagers is one of the main causes of obesity. Table beer containes fewer calories. The whole discussion is also fuelled by the soft drinks producers, who would rather see soft drinks machines in our schools. The schools also pocket some of the profits from sales of soft drinks to their students.

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