IStock Photo 8634271 © Roman Shyshak

"This is rumor control. Here are the facts." -Brian Glover, in “Alien 3.”

The Rumor. The headlines splayed across the national news: Beer Makes Bones Stronger, or Beer Boosts Bones and Fends off Osteoporosis.

The Facts. Space allowing, a more precise headline might read: Grains and Drinking Water Long Known to Contain Silicon. Beer, Long Suspected of Thus Containing Silicon, Confirmed To Contain It—Silicon Positively Associated with Bone Density, But Dietary Allowance Not Yet Established.

Silicon, a metalloid element found in glass and sand, exists in compounds within beer, especially pale, hops-rich beers. In February 2010, Charles W. Bamforth, the Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Brewing Science at UC Davis, published a paper in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture asserting that commercially available beer contains between 6.4 and 56.5 mg of silicon per liter. And recent research, including a 2004 study from the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, has associated silicon intake with increased bone density.

So it seems beer contains silicon, silicon promotes bone health; therefore, beer promotes bone health. That would seem to be a good thing, since the odds a male 20 or older drinks beer at least once a day are 1 in 7.46; a female 20 or older, 1 in 26.32.

Well, sort of.

There are mitigating factors at work here:

The recommended daily allowance of silicon is currently unknown. While silicon is necessary for bone health—silicon deficiency causes skull and bone deformities in lab animals—it is unclear how much silicon is necessary. Evidently not much: No human has ever been identified as having a silicon deficiency. Your body needs far more of other trace elements, like magnesium (between 240 and 420 mg/day).

Other foods and liquids are rich, or richer, in silicon. It can be found in many unprocessed, unrefined foods, especially plants. Lettuce, cabbage, asparagus, olives, cucumbers, radishes, white onions, and even bananas all contain silicon. The odds a male 20 or older eats a banana at least once a day are not quite as high as that he drinks beer (1 in 10.87), but they are higher for a female (1 in 9.01). If bananas are not your thing, even richer in silicon are whole grains, like rice, wheat, oats (4,250 mg/kg), and barley (2,420 mg/kg). Beer, made with barley and hops, naturally retains a small portion of this silicon content.

A fruit- and vegetable-rich diet contains all the silicon a body could ever need. More to the point, since no one has ever been found to be silicon-deficient, virtually any diet contains enough silicon.

Even drinking water contains it. Orthosilicic acid, found in drinking water—and ocean water, or any water with traces of silicates in it, for that matter—is another source of silicon.

More than a few beers may reverse or negate the positive health effects of beer's silicon content. A 2009 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that, while having 1-2 drinks per day was associated with higher bone mass density, having more than 2 drinks a day was associated with lower BMD. In men, at least.

That said... it's still a fact: 1 or 2 beers, responsibly consumed, have at least one salutary effect thanks to silicon. Silicon helps the body process calcium, and currently the odds an adult 65 or older has osteoporosis are 1 in 6.06.

“I walked to that jukebox to play/ a few sad country songs/ I heard someone say/ ‘Hey, that old boy/ ain't nothin’ but beer and bones.’ ” —John Michael Montgomery