‘Beer makes me fat’ – and other reasons millennials are saying no to their favourite brews
- A survey of 1,000 millennials in the US and UK revealed that a sizeable percentage are drinking less beer because of calorie counts and health concerns – even as beer giants attempt to repackage their products as nutritious options
Millennials are cutting back on alcohol, and beer is being hit the hardest.
31 per cent of millennials polled by Bank of America Merrill Lynch said they are drinking less alcohol than before, up from 21 per cent in 2018. BAML surveyed 1,000 millennials in the United States and UK, publishing results on September 9.
If people start to see beer as something that is not necessarily healthy, then inevitably people will start to drink less beer
Among millennials who are drinking less, 35 per cent said they were drinking less of all kinds of alcohol. 27 per cent said they were drinking less beer – more than the 26 per cent who said they were drinking less spirits and the 12 per cent who said they were drinking less wine.
Beer sales have slipped in the US in recent years, with sales by volume dropping by 1 per cent in the US from 2017 to 2018, according to Euromonitor data.
A good 37 per cent of the millennials who said that they are drinking less beer said they were ditching the drink because of calorie counts or because “beer makes me fat”. And 19 per cent explained the change by saying they preferred other types of alcohol, and just 5 per cent said beer is no longer trendy. A further 29 per cent mentioned other reasons for ditching beer, including “health concerns”, breastfeeding a child, and “stopped binge drinking”.
AB InBev and other beer makers have attempted to win over anti-beer millennials by reframing brews as nutritious options. Bud Light, for example, centred its Super Bowl campaign on the fact that the beer is not made with corn syrup, unlike rival Coors Light.
“If people start to see beer as something that is not necessarily healthy, then inevitably people will start to drink less beer,” Anheuser-Busch InBev US CMO Marcel Marcondes said in February.
“But if we manage to make them see clearly, beer really is predominantly made with natural ingredients as it is, if we talk about low carbs, low calories, if we have tailor-made propositions like Michelob Ultra, we can change that game,” Marcondes continued.
Beer giants are also diversifying outside beer. AB InBev, Natural Light, and PBR have rolled out hard seltzer brands over the last year in an effort to win over health-conscious customers. AB InBev also acquired Babe Wine, the maker of White Girl Rosé, in June.
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