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Just in time for the Bank Holiday weekend, the Metro is reporting that drinking beer can sort of help you lose weight and say goodbye to that beer belly.

A new study done by researchers at Oregon State University found that xanthohumol, a flavonoid found in hops and beer, helped the mice used in their research lose weight and lower their cholesterol levels.

The team split 48 male mice into two groups – both being fed the same high-fat diets, but one group was fed 30-60 milligrams of xanthohumol per kilogram of bodyweight each day for 12 weeks. The mice that were given a higher dosage of xanthuhmol actually cut their cholesterol levels by 80 percent and gained 22 percent less weight the other group of mice, despite eating the same high fat diet.

What does this mean for us? Well xanthuhomol, a chemical found in the beer that most of us drink every weekend, could actually prevent you from putting on weight, as it did with the mice. The only downside is that the mice were fed rather a lot of the stuff, with regards to their body size. In human proportions, a man would need to drink 3,500 pints of beer in 24 hours to get the human equivalent of xanthohumol that the mice got.

Bring on the Bank Holiday.