Hey, America! The rest of the world is wondering: What's with the bland beer?
It's no secret that the American beer market is dominated by pale, mild beer.
Despite the rising number of craft brewers here in Michigan and across the country, our best-selling beer is, you guessed it, Bud Light! Coors Light and Miller Lite come in right behind it.
Economist Ranjit Dighe wanted to figure out why Americans like bland beer.
Dighe is a professor and chair of the economics department at the State University of New York at Oswego. He says because the beer is blander and lighter in color, consumers may believe it is less intoxicating.
"This was a country where you had industrialization going on and really long work hours. People would go to lunch wherever they could near the factory; often that was a saloon. If they came back drunk, they were fired.
So even without a temperance movement, you would have pressure to find some kind of drink that isn't going to get you drunk when you need to go back to work right away," Dighe says.
