> To identify a “safe” level of alcohol consumption, valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that at and below a certain level, there is no risk of illness or injury associated with alcohol consumption. The new WHO statement clarifies: currently available evidence cannot indicate the existence of a threshold at which the carcinogenic effects of alcohol “switch on” and start to manifest in the human body.
The headline is not accurate it looks like. The article states that we don’t know if occasional drinking is harmful. And it makes sense we don’t know, because you can’t do an effective longitudinal study where you compare very light drinking to no drinking because the expected effect size is small and all the confounders will muddy the water.
Toasted bread and cinnamon are carcinogenic but I can’t imagine a WHO headline asserting that “no amount of cinnamon is safe for your health”.
""no amount of cinnamon is safe for your health"".
This is the point I was making when I posted my earlier facetious point about life being fatal.
If we'd studied the effects of many other common day-to-day chemicals or foodstuffs that we take for granted in our lives to the extent we'd studied ethanol then we'd likely find them equally or even more dangerous.
Keep in mind we all produce small amounts of ethanol as the result of digestion, similarly so methanol which is far more dangerous than ethanol. These are a part of the life cycle whether we like it or not.
It would be much more helpful if WHO would accept the fact that all humans process small amounts of alcohol and likely always will and instead concentrate on minimizing the harmful consumption thereof.
PS: spare a thought for those comparatively rare but unfortunate individuals who fail breathalyzer tests when they've not been drinking because their gut microbes produce sufficient ethanol to trigger tests. Phrases like 'no amount' aren't helpful.
For anyone else wondering about this DIY ethanol production, it is aptly named "Auto-brewery Syndrome".
The production of endogenous ethanol occurs in minute quantities as part of normal digestion, but when fermenting yeast or bacteria become pathogenic, extreme blood alcohol levels may result. Auto-brewery syndrome is more prevalent in patients with co-morbidities such as diabetes, obesity, and Crohn disease [2][3] but can occur in otherwise healthy individuals.[4] [...] While auto-brewery syndrome is rarely diagnosed, it is probably underdiagnosed.
cinnamon may be - don't know. i was talking about browned/burnt toast, in which several carcinogens have been identified, as they are in just about everything, if you look hard enough.
> However, a large number of epidemiologic studies (both case-control and cohort studies) in humans have found no consistent evidence that dietary acrylamide exposure is associated with the risk of any type of cancer (9, 14).
not "no evidence" though. my general point over all of my comments on this question is that many "studies" are of doubtful significance - including burnt toast.
The proportion of cancers attributable to alcohol is 4.1% of all cases, from [1]. Of that, the ‘Light to Moderate’ alcohol category (<=1.5L of wine per week or <=3.5L of beer per week) had 13.3% of cases for alcohol-attributable cancers and 2.3% of alcohol-related cancer cases.
That statement/summary was published after another large scale study was published in the same journal. IIRC that Lancet study is also kind of complex in that the harms are different with age. So before 40 years or so, the risk of alcohol is due to things like car accidents, falls, fights, etc, and after age 40 it's things like cancer etc.
I think they even see the protective effect of light drinking on things like cardio outcomes in younger individuals, it's just outweighed by accidents etc.
Take what I'm saying with a grain of salt though because this is based on recent memory of from reading it before.
But if so, I think it changes the nature of the message a bit — although it's literally true there is no safe level of alcohol consumption in a population mortality risk sense, what that means is sort of complex and age-dependent, and might be something you can counteract, or might not.
Brit here, upvoted for the giggle, but behind that I must admit we brits arguably have a serious (as in not at all funny) drug problem and that drug is alcohol.
I personally knew someone who drank himself to death, literally. I've heard from reliable sources of quite a few others who did the same, so I reckon it's broke.
Yeah calling 1.5L/w 'light moderate' it's a stretch
But anyway, I always take such research with a grain of salt (or maybe with a glass of wine) because alcohol consumption has personal relationship benefits
Also not discounting the possibility that it's another "fat is bad" craze
Then again it's equivalent of 3.5 liters of beer per week. And you don't see people who drink one beer after work and at most two on weekend calling themselves heavy drinkers.
I have always given the research credit that it may just be highly counter intuitive but it has always seemed rather obvious that drinking poison is not part of optimal longevity.
The least shocking thing is for new research to come out claiming no amount of poison is good for you.
I quite enjoy drinking a few times a year but pushing 50 there is nothing that makes me feel as bad as even a few beers the night before compared to getting up and going for my morning 60 min walk without.
Calling it "poison" is not an honest description of it
That "poison" is present in fruits, and there is even evidence that we have evolved to eat fermented foods, containing said substance (which doesn't get metabolized in the best way, sure, but not in the worse way neither).
UV rays are also "poison" and also essential to normal life. Oxygen is literally toxic to several life forms on earth.
Other "poisons" present in food are cyanide for example. Vitamin A is also very damaging at high quantities.
What matters is obviously per person... So "if you are a couple" is completely irrelevant.
Terms like 'light', 'moderate' or 'heavy' drinking are relative and must be taken in context.
For instance, historically it has been customary in many countries to drink wine with every meal. So 2 bottles per week is indeed moderate as it's about 1-2 glasses per meal. Likewise, 3.5l a beer per week is one beer at dinner, which is considered quite moderate, indeed.
Basically, if your drinking is moderate during meals only and no hard liquor this is considerate 'moderate' to normal in traditional terms.
For the context, I am French, living in Germany. As a tradition (but maybe I am old) you never drink wine alone. This is why my remark "as couple" because it is the minimal number of people you need to drink. But again, this is my education, so very personal.
There's a video of a journalist asking a Russian official "Why do cigarettes say 'Smoking kills' on the pack, but vodka has no such label on the bottle?" to which the official replies "Why would vodka say 'Smoking kills' on the bottle?!?".
I think the fact that smoking forces others around you to smoke, whereas drinking doesn't is a big part of it. Along with the fact that drinking occasionally is far more common than smoking occasionally. Nicotine is far more adictive.
I don't agree. For one, I've done it myself, and you can have just as much fun, if not more without alcohol. Though when the crowd gets too pissed, I usually just move on or go home. I like to drink occasionally, though, but I often abstain because I don't like the day after effect. Second I know abstainers who regularly go out with peeps who drink, and they do just fine. It's ofc annoying the third time someone you clearly told that you don't drink still offers you a drink, but most drinkers are completely fine and respectful with it. So IMO it's wrong to force such labels on casual drinkers. Meanwhile I understand why there are labels on smokes, because it's hella addictive and it also seriously unhealthy even for third parties.
Only if you're in a group where everyone is going to drink. If you go to a restaurant or a bar and everyone around you is drinking, I don't feel that really affects much my decision of whether or not I'll order an alcoholic drink. Whereas I got to believe that, if you're a smoker and other people around you are smoking, it's going to be difficult not to light one up yourself. It's the thing about nicotine addiction being much more common than alcoholism.
> I think the fact that smoking forces others around you to smoke, whereas drinking doesn't is a big part of it.
I'd be curious if cooking with wine falls into this category of affecting others. For example, at a restaurant if a meal has a little bit of wine in its sauce will that be listed on the menu or would it be added behind the scenes sort of like you wouldn't expect to see "garlic powder" or "pepper" listed on the menu for what's on a steak.
Friend of mine in recovery pointed out recently that this isn't true. In fact depending on the other ingredients and cooking duration, there may well be quite a bit of alcohol by volume in any 'wine sauce' or similar dish. It's the water that will evaporate first
"Meats and baked goods that are cooked for 25 minutes without being stirred retain 45 percent of alcohol."
I guess I can update towards "most of it will probably be cooked off" but 45% is still non negligible for a lot of scenarios. And even 5% remaining after 2.5 hours of boiling means that I should probably expect some alcohol no matter what.
That's slightly misleading. The final ABV is what really matters in the end. So, even though maybe only half of the wine alcohol evaporated, the fact that it's so diluted means the end ABV is probably going to be way below wine or even beer. I think a table with the actual ABV of all the common dishes that take any form of alcohol would be far more useful.
By the way, I'm pretty sure alcohol evaporates before the water. That's the reason you evaporate and collect the alcohol in distillation instead of evaporating the water and keeping the alcohol.
> beef with wine sauce, carrots in bourbon sauce, salad greens tossed with a champagne vinaigrette, and amaretto apple crisp.
these are all very different kinds of alcohol.
for example "beef with wine sauce" it's cooked using one small glass of wine (usually red) at around 10% (so not a good one to drink, typically more like 12% and up, but one specifically used for cooking) for 4 people.
One glass of wine at 10% contains ~10 grams of pure alcohol. Even if the dish retained 45% of it it would mean 4 grams of alcohol for 4 persons, while eating, which is a well known fact, considerably reduces the amount of alcohol absorbed and its potential dangers.
Even though based on my research cooking the meat for 2 hours, like you usually do for "beef with wine sauce" retains at max 5% of the alcohol.
So it's more like zero.
edit: I guess people are downvoting because in USA people are obsessed by the 12 steps or whatever they are called and cannot use moderation, they either drink to death or do not drink at all, because they are "clean" now and their body is a tremple.
So here it is the data
Meats and baked goods that are cooked for 25 minutes without being stirred retain 45 percent of alcohol. Stews and other dishes that simmer for two and one-half hours tend to have the lowest amounts, but they retain about five percent of the alcohol
Even though they have no obligation to, usually a dish that contains alcohol will say it's cooked in beer or it has a wine sauce. Being prepared with an alcoholic drink is usually considered classier. I think it's more likely for the restaurant to say they used wine or beer and, in fact, there is no alcohol but just flavourings, than it is for them to omit that part of the recipe.
I guess it's cultural.
Human consumption of alcoholic beverages goes back to thousands of years while tobacco has been used in Europe since the 15th century when it was brought back from America.
Wine is present in the Bible and used in Christian churches during mass.
It is also used in Jewish celebrations and holidays.
Tobacco doesn't have the same history and cultural impact. From what I understand it is/was mainly "spiritually" used by American Natives for shamanic celebrations. (I can clearly be wrong on that)
> The lists describe the level of evidence that something can cause cancer, not how likely it is that something will cause cancer in any person (or how much it might raise your risk). For example, IARC considers there to be strong evidence that both tobacco smoking and eating processed meat can cause cancer, so both are listed as “carcinogenic to humans.” But smoking is much more likely to cause cancer than eating processed meat, even though both are in the same category.
in the same group you'll find solar radiation (yes, literally the Sun light), UVs (A,B and C), X-ray and many other substances and/or radiations we are exposed to on a daily basis.
I've known people who died from skin cancer and who died from late term alcoholism with pancreatic cancer. I guess dosage matters, even though the effect would be daily available.
A lot of people that die of cancer never drank a sip of alcohol or smoked a cigarette.
Alcohol increases the risk factor, but it's not like tobacco, alcohol is correlated to an increase of breast cancer and oral cavity cancer at maximum 20-25% more. 20-25% means 1.2-1.25 times, tobacco increases the risk 2,000-2,500% which means 20-25 times.
If you look at the stats in my country for oral cavity tumor, men risk (of getting it, survival rate after 5 years is over 60%) is 6 / 100,000, women risk is at 2.2/100,000. So a woman drinking heavily will see her risk go up to 2.75, which is still half the risk of men.
That's the kind of risk we are talking about here.
In perspective, if it was about tobacco the risk would go up from 2.2 to 55. A bit different, isn't it?
People react to these headlines in the wrong way: they confuse "risk increases" with "certain death". It's not like that, still a lot of cancer patients had a completely normal almost risk free life and we don't know why they got it, the only thing for sure is that it ran into their families. That's the biggest risk of them all.
And do not forget that age is a big risk factor too, one of the biggest.
Back to oral cavity cancer: in my Country average age of the diagnosis is 64, 95% of them are diagnosed after the age of 40.
It’s a matter of proportion. A normal smoking habit puts somebody at (if I remember correctly) something like a 50% chance of dying early from a smoking-caused disease. As another reply to your commenter said, as much as 90% of lung cancers are cause by smoking. In comparison, this study is talking about an estimated 4.1% of cancer cases being attributable to alcohol, and only 13.3% of that for the ‘light to moderate’ category, which many would consider still a fairly substantial consumption.
It’s not nothing, and yes, there needs to be stronger messaging about the dangers of heavy drinking, binge drinking etc., but having a couple (2-4) of beers or glasses of wine a week is not massively increasing your risk of cancer, much more than just living somewhere with high UV or a lot of roads.
the story is that cigarettes are well researched and documented to cause agressive lung cancers, heart disease and many other problems. the story on alcohol is much less clear and even if true, much lower risk
This is correct. Do you know what percent of lung cancer is attributable to smoking? 90%! 9/10 lung cancer deaths are attributable to smoking.
Compare this to ~5% of cancer related death attributable to alcohol use.
It's just not even an accurate comparison.
To be honest though? I am willing to bet that cost to healthcare system for alcohol related illness is outpacing that of smoking related illness. Cirrhosis of the liver is a very costly disease when it gets close to end stage.
cost to healthcare is certainly high where some individuals are concerned, as any one who has been in accident & emergency on a saturday night will observe.
but of course the vast majority of people that drink on saturday night do NOT end up in A&E.
Comparing 90% to 5% would be very silly. What percentage of cancer-related deaths are attributable to tobacco use? (In the same sense of "attributable" as for the alcohol?)
"the story on alcohol is much less clear and if it even true, much lower risk"
What? Afaik alcohol is pretty well known to increase risks of several cancers in population. Individual response to alcohol is of course a much more complex topic with genetics affecting a large palette of physiological and neurological responses to alcohol. For populations - alcohol is a health risk. For individual - the narrative is far more nuanced (more risk for some than others etc).
I understand that the statement "only no alcohol is really safe" is correct. But it is not helpful in my everyday life. Exactly the same problem exists with gasoline. It is simply not possible (or extremely costly) to completely avoid the substance or their effects. To refuse a beer in Germany is an affront that I would like to weigh against the risk of cancer.
In fact, I have found information on the question:
The daily consumption of 50 grams of pure alcohol - equivalent to about 1.5 liters of beer or 0.5 liters of wine - increases the risk of cancer two- to threefold.
Continuously high alcohol consumption is also one of the main causes of liver cancer. Consuming more than 80 grams of alcohol (about 2 liters of beer) per day increases the risk of liver cancer by a factor of four to seven. Women have a significantly higher alcohol-related liver cancer risk than men.
Increased risk of cancer of the colon and rectum begins at four glasses per day. Compared to people living abstinent from alcohol, this increases the risk of cancer by 1.4 times.
The risk of breast cancer in women increases from just one daily glass of an alcoholic beverage (e.g. 0.3 liters of beer). Each additional glass increases the risk by about seven percent.
Why? You have all the required information to make an educated decision for yourself. Others do too. Allow them to decide without harassment.
I quit smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol years ago now. As the calculus changed, my habits followed suit. Everyone should be allowed to choose how they live.
> To refuse a beer in Germany is an affront that I would like to weigh against the risk of cancer.
Who is harassing who if someone feels that their choice of not drinking beer will cause affront? Hoping that cultural norms will change and it will cease to be an affront to refuse a drink is not harassing. People exerting social pressure on others who refuse a beer is. That is why I'm hoping any such practices disappear.
Exactly for the reason you state, to allow each to decide without harassment.
> To refuse a beer in Germany is an affront that I would like to weigh against the risk of cancer.
Really? I'm from Germany and I don't think that's the case in most places. In the worst case, just say "sorry, my doctor said I can't drink alcohol for a while - you've got one without alc, pal?" and you should be good.
What's fascinating about this isn't the study itself - it's the reactions people here are having.
From "I guess that means fruit juice should be illegal since it can contain alcohol!" to "Life leads to death too!". Just any justification to call the WHO's point bunk.
Denial, in a word.
This is the world's leading body on science health giving a result that I'm guessing most of us don't want to hear. Because we like alcohol and want to be told we're right for liking it.
I think the result is completely true. Just the same, I plan to keep occasionally drinking a beer, the same as I occasionally consume horrendously unhealthy food or spend too long in front of a computer screen. It's okay to do unhealthy things in moderation.
But if being told it would be best to drink only in moderation, if at all, triggers an angry response and denial, maybe you should have a sit down and think about what that means.
I think it's more like: yeah, we know, but people are able of being responsible too.
So don't assume that living a week more in a lifetime should be a goal, I assume these studies are published to get some funding for the team who publish them, not because they are useful for the public debate.
Because they are not.
Alcohol is much less dangerous than the car tyres, moderate alcohol consumption is also associated in many studies to health benefits, just like drugs are not good for your health but without them the chances of dying of common disease increase two fold, so they're not as bad as they look.
Maybe people should care about important stuff, not the sensationalistic stuff.
Meanwhile:
The car tyre particles pollute air, water and soil and contain a wide range of toxic organic compounds, including known carcinogens, the analysts say, suggesting tyre pollution could rapidly become a major issue for regulators. Air pollution causes millions of early deaths a year globally
> Because we like alcohol and want to be told we're right for liking it.
That works the other way too. It's all too easy for people who don't like alcohol anyway to jump on studies like these, but the fact that their personal preference aligns with health advice doesn't justify their expressions of moral superiority. There's no moral dimension to it. It's little more than happenstance.
"Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes" still applies.
I'm sure many folks here will be familiar with Andrew Huberman. If not, I highly recommend listing to his podcast, The Huberman Lab Podcast. Relevant to this discussion is his brilliant episode on alcohol [1]: "What Alcohol Does to Your Body, Brain & Health". Boy, was this episode a life-changing listen for me. The conclusion is the same as the linked study, that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.
Reading through the comments here there seems to be much negative sentiment against this study. But what they are right? What if alcohol is actually just bad for you full stop. Would this really be that shocking or controversial that a known poison is poisonous?
> What if alcohol is actually just bad for you full stop
It is.
The point is it is not so bad that you should worry so much about it, just use moderation.
Like everything else in your life, especially past 40, you should use common sense: don't eat hamburgers every day, it's bad for your health. You should walk more, a sedentary lifestyle is really bad for your health. You should reduce the amount of sports you do and prefer moderate physical activity to playing football with your friends (see Hulk Hogan current health status), etc. etc.
It's not like tobacco, processed food or driving, those are really dangerous things for your health and will reduce your life span considerably.
Anyway, they tried prohibitionism in USA, it didn't work, so I guess alcohol is here to stay with us, till the end of time.
They have been lots of studies (many alcohol industry sponsored) that said that moderate alcohol was not only harmless, but GOOD for you. I think getting the message out, that no, its never good for you is important to do to counter that previous narrative.
The WHO is saying its bad for you and that's fine. And as you've said, once people have the information they can choose the risk profiles that suit them.
I guess people can make their own deductions as to good or bad. Alcohol is mostly detoxified in the body by two enzymes. Alcohol dehydrogenase breaks down alcohol to acetaldehyde which is a highly toxic substance and a known carcinogen. Acetaldehyde is then thankfully further metabolized to acetate (harmless) and thence to water and carbon dioxide. Neither alcohol or acetaldehyde are exactly friendly to cells to put it mildly. As we know, the former is an excellent preservative once the cells are dead.
As with the rest of life, it's a balance of risks. Having the right genes may be helpful. Jeanne Calment lived to 111 and apparently enjoyed a daily spot of port.
it's neither shocking or controversial to say that excess alcohol (for example, falling-down drunk) is bad for the majority of people. what is irritating to people of a logical/scientific bent is saying that ANY alcohol at all is going to lead to a a bad result, with minimal or no evidence.
for example, the bottle of gin that i have beside me has a label on it that says i should not exceed 2 small glasses a day. where did this figure come from? somebody made it up!
that is not a high frequency for a regular drinker who is not an alcoholic. and my point was that this figure was made up by people who, with no evidence, simply made up this figure.
So basically direct exposure to Sun light should be avoided.
edit: UV do cause DNA damage, so following the same logic, no amount of Sun light can be considered safe. Which is true, but the effects are usually negligible, so, as usual, common sense is your best friend.
Dose does make the poison, and factors like sunscreen, long sleeve shirts, avoiding being out when the sun is high, all affect your dose. Pretty much everybody in my family wears hats and long sleeve shirts to the beach because we have a family history of skin cancer
Regular moderate drinkers are less likely to get kidney stones -- 41% less likely for those who drink beer, 33% for wine drinkers
Alcohol consumption is associated with reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes and autoimmune diabetes in adults: results from the Nord-Trøndelag health study (one of the leading causes of death in USA, for example)
It's not black and white, we can't keep going to "war" with stuff, like the "war on drugs", it's not smart.
Absolutism is the enemy of good reasoning.
There are many other factors involved in people drinking or eating things that aren't completely safe long term, it doesn't mean people are suicidal, it means people like to enjoy good things in life even though some of them are not completely risk free.
Going on a hike is not risk free, no amount of hiking has zero risks associated with it.
Hell, the fireplace emits carcinogens similar to those found in tobacco and burnt pizza crust is associated to higher risk of getting cancer!
It would be very useful to rate all sorts of things in terms of the effect on life expectancy so people could make educated decisions. Is one serving of beer/wine better or worse than being say 5kg over weight? Or 2 portions of red meat? Or living next to a main road?
Without the ability to actually measure these numbers and compare them we don't actually know anything. This is data but not information...
I’ve not had drink in 15 years and I’m 35. I stopped for a number of reasons but the main one was that when I had a drink I became a fairly unpleasant person. Seeing friends around me evolve their relationship with alcohol has been interesting. Many have reduced their intake over years, some have drifted it up and without a doubt those who drink less are healthier and happier.
None have been able to go tea total for more than a few months but are happy I am as always being sober comes in handy sometimes (dealing with emergencies primarily when out/away from home)
Time to start treating it as any other drug then. Bring back the prohibition, throw the users, producers, sellers and so on to jail. It is least we can do to protect the young from it.
We know that banning alcohol doesn’t work. We should do what we did for tobacco. Ban advertisements for alcohol. Do the same for other vice. If consenting adults want to engage in vice that doesn’t hurt other people such as gambling, alcohol, etc. then allow it. Just don’t allow it to be advertised.
Can’t deny that as someone who has abstained from alcohol my entire life, feeling pretty smart every time more of these studies come out.
And after that we could put age restrictions to any media that markets alcoholic drinks in positive light. Just make them R rated, and add suitable warnings before any old programs. This should direct producers of such programs to steer clear.
I bet sugar is even more harmful, yet I doubt there will be any raising of awareness on that front (from the health industry). I think removing sugar from most foods in the grocery store would have much more impact than banning all alcohol. It just seems the priorities on harmful substances are not in order, from a perspective of a healthy society.
I mean this comes not as surprise to anyone who’s had a drink or a few.
I enjoy a drink on occasion but the after effects are noticeable. I mean your body tells you the next day.
Though an occasional drink reduces stress, which is a positive effect, though it’s not advised to use as medicine.
Alcohol's ill effects have been known for awhile, but alcohol companies continuously undermined studies that would conclusively demonstrate it. Basically, unless you're older and have a certain type of heart disease that alcohol may help, the costs of alcohol are always greater than the benefits. Then again, this is up for the individual to decide, whether they believe their perceived benefits outweigh the potential health costs. At least now, they can make a more informed choice knowing the risks involved.
There is more solid evidence for alcohol causing cancer than for RoundUp(glyphosate). Yet people will happily have a beer while discussing how evil Monsanto is.
By failing to note that moderate (or lower) consumption is associated with less than 1% of global “alcohol attributed cancer”, while raising the specter of cancer itself as a leading cause of death, they’ve basically just behaved like shrill, manipulative prohibitionists instead of scientists.
“All alcohol consumption appears to be harmful” can be stated without “OMG CANCER UR GONNA DIE” equivalents if you are serious and responsible.
I think he is referring to hormetic stress. But WHO says the same about lead… there is no safe level. I wouldn’t want to stress my body lightly with a light amount of lead.
This needs a true cost-benefit analysis. Thats what we do for any type of medical intervention. Some surgeries are super risky and some drugs have severe side effects that can kill you. Still, the overall benefit is positive.
Benefits: reduced stress, increased social interactions, improved mood
Costs: reduced lifespan, liver issues, addiction
I’ll bet the benefits outway the costs over an entire population. Maybe not by much, but i bet its a net benefit.
Considering humans have been using it thousands of years I’d tend to agree. We have a habit today of quickly throwing away things people have done forever believing, arrogantly, that we are the first people to finally be right. We tend to privilege certain types of information (scientific study in this case) without considering the broader context and practical realities. And that trying to live forever is futile.
Afaik that is debunked according to latest data but I leave the details for any medical professionl who is reading this and would like to clarify the issue.
Since it’s apparently not bleedingly obvious which way it is moderate drinking is clearly not as bad as, say. a heroin addiction. So go ahead, be a moderate drinker but don’t fool yourself by delusions of better health outcomes.
> To identify a “safe” level of alcohol consumption, valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that at and below a certain level, there is no risk of illness or injury associated with alcohol consumption
that's such a broken premise that everything that comes after that must be broken as well.
We could prove, using the same logic, that "no level of life consumption is safe for our health"
It is impossible to prove that everyone's injuries over the course of an entire life are not associated with being alive.
edit: meanwhile car accidents in my country are responsible for 12 deaths every 100,000 people every year. Avoidable deaths. Please WHO go back to being a reliable source of good information and not an "ora et labora" kind of publication.
Alcohol consumption is always a net health risk. It's also quite fun and adults should be allowed to do what they want with their bodies. But one should always be aware of the risks. The statement "alcohol is not bad for my health" is only true if a person is about to die from alcohol withdrawal symptoms.
Or, if you accept that definition, the air you breathe is even more dangerous for your health.
Food is even more dangerous than air. [1]
> The statement "alcohol is not bad for my health" is
somewhat true.
The kind of food popular in USA average diet is killing a lot more people.
The solution is not to stop eating altogether, but to eat less and better.
It's exactly the same for alcohol.
Because I can assure you that working is not good for your health too.
[1] edit: number 1 cause of death in USA is heart diseases, for both men and women.
There are a lot of studies that associated processed food with an increase of heart related disease, it's also not news anymore at this point.
an excerpt from this NYT article, among many of the same kind
More than 100 million adults — almost half the entire adult population — have pre-diabetes or diabetes. Cardiovascular disease afflicts about 122 million people and causes roughly 840,000 deaths each year, or about 2,300 deaths each day. Three in four adults are overweight or obese. More Americans are sick, in other words, than are healthy.
A net health risk in a population. If we plot alcohol consumption in a population where x is alcohol consumed and y is health outcomes, and start from a value of ”y=1” at ”x=0” consumption, the curve will have a negative derivative everywhere.
Alcohol may be fun, and moderate drinkers may reach old age, but statistically speaking it’s not a) necessary or b) healthy.
Claims otherwise are delutional (unless one has some really unique response to alcohol consumption).
Alcohol is fun in moderate amounts just like cake but neither are good for you. This does not mean one should not drink or eat cake - just don’t delude yourself
I don’t know how to write the following compassionately so I’m going to just write it - my intention is not to insult. I’m not sure why you are equating drug use with physiological necessities but if you feel you need to be defensive of your or someone elses drinking habits that’s a red flag for alcoholism.
Usually alcoholics - typical of addiction- get pretty defensive of their habit. ”This is good for me”, ”I know what I’m doing”, ”This is nobodys business but my own”. So if one is drinking - well, even moderately by their standards thoughts like these should give a pause and instigate a moment of self reflection.
> If we plot alcohol consumption in a population where x is alcohol consumed and y is health outcomes, and start from a value of ”y=1” at ”x=0” consumption, the curve will have a negative derivative everywhere.
Again.
NO!
Such plot does not exists, or you would show it to us.
A very recent Lancet study show that up to 2 standard units of alcohol a day, there's no measurable difference with non drinking people.
Two standard units is more than a pint of beer.
And above that, the difference is barely noticeable until some serious quantity of alcohol (4 units and above a day)
Do you have some more reliable data than Lancet by any chance?
> but statistically speaking it’s not a) necessary or b) healthy
statistically speaking you don't need hotdogs or coffee and they are not exactly healthy. Am I right?
statistically speaking you don't need opioids and yet
deaths involving opioids increased from an estimated 70,029 in 2020 to 80,816 in 2021
and it's even worse
an average of 44 people died each day from overdoses involving prescription opioids, totaling more than 16,000 deaths
so there's also that.
Maybe in US you have a moderation problem.
Maybe is a social problem, not an health issue.
> I’m not sure why you are equating drug use with physiological necessities but if you feel you need to be defensive of your or someone elses drinking habits that’s a red flag for alcoholism.
because the benefits are higher than the risks associated with them.
Biking is associated with a number of benefits, but biking is also very dangerous.
there is no amount of biking that can be considered risk free!
So, please, stop being Malachia from "The name of the rose"
> Usually alcoholics - typical of addiction- get pretty defensive of their habit
This is getting pathetic.
My family makes their own wine, from our own grapes, for family consumption, we've been doing it for centuries.
We love doing it together and then consume it together, as a family.
It makes our collective life better.
My grandparents, gran-grand parents and grand-grand-grand parents died on average after 90.
I would argue that usually the more pedantic anti-something are former addicts.
My dad was a heavy smoker, he is the most annoying anti-smoke person in the World.
You sound exactly like one of those "sober" people.
This is different thing than consumption in a population - if you increase the consumption in population only slightly it means some people will increase their consumption more and some less - and for those who increase their consumption more the mortality effects likely get worse.
If you are from one of the low-drink-mortality countries then statistically I'm pretty sure alcohol in your reference population is far less mortality inducing than for example in my reference population (Finland) and I guess if the lancet type stats were collected from each country the number of "safe drinks per week" as a function of excess mortality would be quite different.
I guess your family is quite good at handling their drinking, but globally alcohol is quite lethal - according to WHO 3 million deaths per year (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/alcohol). This is in same range as reported covid deaths in 2020 (3M) https://www.who.int/data/stories/the-true-death-toll-of-covi.... So alcohol roughly kills as many people per year as a global pandemic that just locked down half of the world for two years. But as we perceived from the above mortality-per-country chart, this is not evenly distributed by a long shot.
My intention was not to moralize, just to be clear headed about the stats. But the stats for an individual are quite different depending where you drink, I guess.
I've never met anyone so passionate about drinking who was not addicted to it. It's fun to realize a person can be passionate about it as a cultural and family tradition as well. Yes, I've met many an alcoholic, sadly. High mortality alcohol death country. In my reference population alcohol is quite lethal. That does not stop me from enjoying my drink now and then but I'm pretty coolheaded about the stats.
I realize you zeal came from a family tradition and this was a huge cultural misunderstanding - I wish well to your tradition and hope a plentiful next harvest :)
The headline is not accurate it looks like. The article states that we don’t know if occasional drinking is harmful. And it makes sense we don’t know, because you can’t do an effective longitudinal study where you compare very light drinking to no drinking because the expected effect size is small and all the confounders will muddy the water.
Toasted bread and cinnamon are carcinogenic but I can’t imagine a WHO headline asserting that “no amount of cinnamon is safe for your health”.