Seems a bit melodramatic. They have said that about tobacco for years, even decades, and the industry is trucking along just fine.
The trick with these things is always defining âhealthyâ. And itâs a pretty misguided approach (IMHO) to life/nutrition to look at foods/drinks in isolation from the broader lifestyle.
There is no such thing as a âhealthyâ food, because you cannot survive just on one item, so everything would be a problem if that was all you ate/drank. It only makes sense in the context of your overall lifestyle.
That said, I think itâs pretty clear that alcohol is closer to the toxic than the restorative end of things. So maybe it is useful for people to understand that?
Wine is a great, great joy for many of us, right?
That easily outweighs the minor unhealthy physical aspect (if consumed in moderation).
âIf no amount of alcohol is acceptable for a healthy lifestyle what justification is there for lawmakers to NOT impose draconian marketing restrictions and heavy taxes on wine?â
Bingo.
Sure. I would even be tempted to argue the joy and beauty and culture of wine are more rewarding than that of tobacco (which more quickly becomes just about the addiction cycle). But, those are hard values to measure.
Either way, fermented beverages seem to be an important part of human civilization. I guess it was just the pseudo-science about red wine being good for cholesterol that these new studies feel the need to debunk.
I found Geraldâs comments in this thread very interesting and I think his perspective is relevant to this thread as well
"And the horse you rode in onâ
âNo amount of alcohol is acceptable for a healthy lifestyle.â
What an idiotic statement. It says that no matter what else you do or consume, if you have any alcohol, you do not have a healthy lifestyle.
If they felt some need to say something (which they donât, everybody knows what alcohol is, plus anyone with sense knows not to make their dietary decisions based on government proclamations), they could, I suppose, say âall else equal, it is healthier not to consume alcohol than to consume it.â
But then you could say that for a hundred other things, too.
This is more of the foolish binary thinking that increasingly dominates all forms of discussion. Everything is all one thing or all the other, all good or all bad, healthy or not healthy.
What may seem sensationalistic on the surface is simply in response to all of the neo prohibitionist materials that are currently out there. The industry is very, very, very concerned about the overall tone of all of these materials.
You are bound to find more blog posts and articles coming out similar to this as the avalanche of articles about how bad alcohol is for you ramp up as well.
Agree to disagree on the âclownâ characterization
I think the data on low alcohol consumption increasing the relative risk of female breast cancer is quite compelling.
As I said in the other thread:
Low (6-9g per week of pure alcohol) consumption of alcohol increases the relative risk of female breast cancer by 15%.
Smoking increases the relative risk by 1500-3000%, for comparison, so itâs a pretty small, but statistically significant effect.
The data on men, or all drinkers, once subtracting female breast cancer, is not statistically significant in many studies.
Is there any differentiation in the study for how the alcohol is delivered? And was this just one recent study or has this been a consistent conclusion in studies on wine consumption health impacts? Just curious.
As in IV vs oral?
UPS vs FedEx, surely.
I meant more via beer, which would be a low abv and would assume consumed over longer time versus martinis or shots of bourbon.
I hear the same thing about donuts, but I still eat them. Happily.
Typically the data isnât that granular. the human data is all self reported which is really the main issue, because I imagine most people underreport.
Iâm pretty sure that no amount of iceberg lettuce is healthy, either
Wait! What? This is new to me, and I eat Iceberg Lettuce more often than I drink alcoholâŚ!