The flip-flop on whether alcohol is good for you (2023)

https://slate.com/technology/2023/04/alcohol-wine-drinking-healthy-dangerous-study.html

by nickwritesit • 2 years ago

83 206 2 years ago

monero-xmr• 2 years ago

Harms you physically, sure. But a night out socializing and making memories with friends, the psychological benefits can last a long time, which often positively influences the physical.

browningstreet2• 2 years ago

Alcohol not required.

kryz• 2 years ago

Maybe with your friends…

freedomben• 2 years ago

Not required, but for many people it greatly enhances the experience. For some people it can also be an important part of fully relaxing.

Pet_Ant2• 2 years ago

Absolutely not, but maybe there is a reason why we have used it for centuries? If you watch videos of people travelling to remote villages one of the first things that old timers do is offer them a drink.

There is a value to a social lubricant. People get more passionate, or philosophical. People are less likely to discuss the cost of drywall impacting their bathroom renovation.

Sobriety is merely one state of conciousness, and there is no saying it is solely the best.

cjk23• 2 years ago

Hey if I stayed sober I'd have had three less kids and two less wives.

listless• 2 years ago

No, but it certainly helps. Alcohol makes me a better listener. A better father. A better husband. A better friend. Less selfish. Less judgmental. More caring and more generous.

I drink cautiously because I know the health risks. I limit myself and most of the time do not drink at all. But I would be lying if I said alcohol doesn’t make me a better person.

sixo• 2 years ago

That it's not required is the fun part, and really is necessary for it to be a good idea at all. See GK Chesterton:

"Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world."

TrackerFF2• 2 years ago

But being sober around drunk people sucks.

vorpalhex• 2 years ago

I'm really glad that I've given up alcohol and it improved a lot of things in my life including sleep and anxiety, but it was also one of the single most isolating things I have ever done. I have lost more friends over my not drinking than any politics/life choice/etc. I was not some kind of alcoholic before, it was just very normal for my social circle.

Even for my friends who are still friends, it took them many months to realize it was fine to drink around me and sometimes they still feel awkward about it even though I bring my non-alcoholic alternatives.

Aerbil3136• 2 years ago

Alcohol is absolutely not required. It's the Western culture. I live in a country/social circle where nobody drinks and it's plain out funny seeing Westerners thinking alcohol is some absolute necessity of life.

zeroxfe• 2 years ago

Neither is dressing well, dining out, or taking an uber. Very few things are actually "required."

For some people, alcohol is a low-cost low-effort means to enhance experience and improve social function.

dukeyukey• 2 years ago

You're not wrong, but the jury's out on if not socialising versus socialising with a couple of beers or glasses of wine is healthier. But my bet is on the latter

nonameiguess• 2 years ago

Maybe. The last time I ever really drank on a regular basis was my early 20s, circa turn of the century, and I had two best friends from high school, Mike and Lisa. We went out together almost every night at times, definitely every weekend. Club 80s. Some theater in Hollywood that did John Waters double features with a drag show during the intermission. Pre-gaming with $5 1.75 liter bottles of Popov in the parking lot. We really did make some great memories. It's probably still the best time of my entire life and the closest friendships I ever had.

Lisa died in 2016 from alcohol withdrawals. Mike was a speed addict for nearly a decade but eventually recovered.

My wife is an alcoholic, unfortunately. She's been in the ICU twice in the time we've been married, both times for acute vitamin deficiency and liver failure. She told me once on the way to the hospital that she saw a tunnel with a light at the end and our cat floating in it inviting her to come. The ER doc said she would probably have died within a day if I hadn't brought her in. When Lisa died, it was because her roommate was out of town and there was nobody to notice, care, and bring her in. When she was found, she's already been dead for three days.

I don't know that I have a point. Just be careful. Not you specifically, but everyone out there. If you're 50 and successfully practiced moderation for decades, I guess you'll probably be fine. But if you're a teenager trying to make your parties more thrilling, you're flipping a coin with your life. You don't know which person you'll end up being, the one who can stop or the one who can't.

Aerbil3136• 2 years ago

Just because alcohol is deeply ingrained in Western culture doesn't mean you should feel guilty saying alcohol is unconditionally bad for society, when it took your dear friend and almost your wife, twice. There are other, healthier worldviews and cultures out there. The particular one I'm living in being called Islam.

TheGRS3• 2 years ago

Yea I thought that was the whole reason. But I guess there was a lot of chasing of physical reasons that wine and other alcohol would be beneficial. I usually heard about antioxidants being cited as a positive.

Stress is generally bad for the body (but note: I am not a doctor), and a little alcohol can be a social lubricant and reduce the stress of social situations or just your life problems in general. If the only real benefit of alcohol is from social lubrication, then its probably an almost impossible thing to find causation, just too many factors to deal with.

pfdietz2• 2 years ago

antioxidants being cited as a positive.

There was a big study on the antioxidant vitamins (A, C, E) to see if they helped against lung cancers. It turned out they made it worse, not better. Cancer cells are under oxidative stress, and immune cells using oxidizing substances to help kill their targets.

TrackerFF2• 2 years ago

Getting buzzed feels good. Not healthy, but feels good.

After a couple of beers I get extremely fired up and creative/motivated, but it’s like walking on a tightrope - a bit too much, and I’m past the productive phase.

If cannabis or hallucinogens were allowed, I suspect more people would pick those over alcohol for evening fun at home…but, alas, at most places alcohol is the only option. So that’s what we’re stuck with.

wavemode• 2 years ago

I'm one of those weird people for whom no amount of buzzedness or drunkenness, small or large, feels good.

Doesn't feel bad, per se. I suppose it just feels kind of neutral, and strange. Like my senses have lost a bit of clarity.

midiguy2• 2 years ago

I'm one of those weird people for whom alcohol feels nice but also makes me incredibly sleepy to the point that I become way less social. Thus I will enjoy a beer at home but if I'm going out I will choose other substances (or abstinence).

candiddevmike• 2 years ago

Alcohol doesn't give me crippling anxiety and heightened awareness of all the weird things my body does.

bobthepanda5• 2 years ago

It does for some people.

Either way, hardly a reason to make it illegal.

Workaccount2• 2 years ago

I had this problem until I bought gummies and took comparatively very small doses. Now I can enjoy the warm fuzziness and giggling, without freaking out about what people think of how I am placing my left hand on my lap.

I buy 5mg gummies and cut them in half, 2.5mg is plenty for me.

Spod_Gaju• 2 years ago

I am this way as well. People do not realized that the cannibinol (CB1, CB2) receptors can be overly sensitive in some people. Haveing a lot of ATP and GTP will tend to do this since ATP and GTP sensitize all the g protein coupled receptors.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6461403/

Smoking pot makes me literally curl up into a ball on the floor in panic and anxiety.

InSteady4• 2 years ago

Alcohol is definitely bad for anxiety in the long run if you are using frequently (even in small amounts). It does a real number on your GABAergic system.

steve1977• 2 years ago

Getting buzzed feels good. Not healthy, but feels good.

Does it though? I did not drink for a while now, but basically, if anything, it just attenuated feelings that felt bad a bit. But it never made me feel good per se.

PaulDavisThe1st2• 2 years ago

I don't really drink anymore, and before that I used to drink enough (3-4 glasses of wine most nights) that I rarely hit the sweet spot. But if I could hit it, that buzzy feeling was really pretty damn good (although ... it didn't last very long, and was incredibly easy to overshoot).

Mashimo• 2 years ago

If not, why do you think people drink?

kagakuninja• 2 years ago

People respond to alcohol differently because of genetics. I don't get much euphoria from it, but others do.

globular-toast• 2 years ago

This must be a genetic thing. I've definitely heard other people saying alcohol has a "buzz". But for me it's nothing like that. Any amount will only slow me down and desensitise me. It does lower inhibitions, but never in a desirable way. I realised at some point I was only drinking because of the social obligation and not because I enjoyed it for its own sake.

InSteady4• 2 years ago

It could be non-genetic as well. Various vitamin, mineral, and enzyme deficiencies, brain chemistry (that part of it that isn't genetically determined), and other health stuff could all play a role.

I am sometimes like you describe, where booze basically just makes me feel kind of slow and loopy but not in a way that is pleasant (kind of reminds me of how benzos felt). If I keep pushing to try and force the good feeling with more drinks I only end up tired and irritable, like when you wake up from a nap feeling all out of sorts.

Other times I start getting a nice pleasant "glow" or buzz going within the first half of a drink and can ride that for hours with steady imbibing. Pain is numbed, body feels lighter (paradoxically, because there is also a certain heaviness with drinking), have an easier time focusing and socializing, stress and anxiety are relieved, etc.

Too bad alcohol is so damn addictive and harmful, the latter effects are quite nice.

yrcyrc• 2 years ago

Funny he calls it the French paradox. Last I heard of that concept it was about secret services giving up on setting traps to spies whose wives couldn’t give two effs about their husband being unfaithful. “I know and I don’t give a damn”

Otherwise, and being French, we heard it all. Sometimes it’s wine, others it’s butter, cheese, etc when it’s not like “God was born in France” type of thing.

I’m Breton first, Irish second and then eventually French when they’re playing the World Cup, but seriously there are some enzymes, dietary habits and so on that do justify some of the findings.

They used to serve red wine in schools until late 70’s or 80’s can’t remember but there are definitely DNA, habits, regional effects that do come into place I believe.

BrandoElFollito3• 2 years ago

The wine in schools was dropped in the 60s'. I have never seen wine at school (since mid-70s'). My father told me he had it for lunch though.

This said, Bretagne is special regarding this :) (sorry, couldn't help)

PheonixPharts2• 2 years ago

In my lifetime virtually everything that was once good for you (wine, high grain diet, non-fat foods) is now a bad and vice versa (eggs, high fat - low carb foods).

And articles like this one have been appearing in some variation my entire life. My take away, long ago, is that nutrition is fundamentally complex and poorly understood topic and any extreme opinions are likely to be inverted.

On the topic of alcohol, one things that has really become clear to me, is how directly tied to my environment drinking is. I've always liked to have a beer with dinner, but whether or not that was my only drink or one of many has much less to do with my personal decisions and much more to do with my environment, and I've noticed the same goes for most people.

Many of us became pretty serious drinkers during the pandemic. As it eased up I never made the decision to drink less, I just naturally drank less.

Point being is that no only am I skeptical of the claims of what I should and should not consume, I'm skeptical of entirely how much agency I have to change what I should consume baring case where the impact is immediate.

alamortsubite• 2 years ago

You'll probably enjoy this clip from the Woody Allen movie Sleeper, where his character is revived 200 years in the future after being cryogenically frozen in 1973. Just watch the first minute or so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2fYguIX17Q

xtracto• 2 years ago

There's also a good sketch of a "time travel dietitian": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA

orhmeh09• 2 years ago

Powerful ideas in this film regarding robotics, personal assistant technology, technology addiction, and even bioethics.

radlad• 2 years ago

Point being is that no only am I skeptical of the claims of what I should and should not consume, I'm skeptical of entirely how much agency I have to change what I should consume baring case where the impact is immediate.

Can you elaborate on what you mean that you're skeptical of how much agency you have to change what you should consume? A common definition of addiction is that it is the inability to control your consumption. However, "I never made the decision to drink less, I just naturally drank less," doesn't sound anything like addiction.

I began drinking both more frequently and in increased amounts of alcohol during the pandemic, but for me, this didn't stop or ease up until I made a conscious decision to stop. For me, it was habitual. And with habit came increased tolerance.

PheonixPharts2• 2 years ago

To be clear, as an ex-smoker, I do believe we have agency in the cases where patterns are disruptive. Smoking tobacco got in the way of a range of activities, and I had to put in a serious effort to curb this behavior. Certainly drinkers who find their drinking interferes with other things are able to change their habits. Though even this is probably more environmental than not. I haven't smoked in 20+ years but I also no longer know any smokers. I'm not sure I would be a non-smoker today if smoking rates were closer to what they were in the 1950s. Similarly I have known people with problematic drinking behavior and their ability to stop has always been strongly correlated with having good reasons to stop.

However, for the smaller things that "aren't good for you" in a less immediate sense, I don't think we have as much control over our behaviors as we'd like to believe.

Another example is obesity. Many people still chalk this up to a "moral issue" where people are making "poor choices", but that doesn't seem like a good explanation for why we live in an obesity epidemic. I personally don't think people in 2024 are dramatically less "moral" than they were in 1990.

My personal pandemic realization was that I'm far more of a node in a network of cells in a vast social organism that is humanity than I am an individual actor.

BrandoElFollito3• 2 years ago

My mother told me that when she was young, tomatoes vere very suspect. So yes, these nutritional advices are very volatile.

czl• 2 years ago

FYI: Tomato leaves and stems contain solanine, a toxic glycoalkaloid that can cause digestive issues, headaches, and other symptoms if consumed in large quantities.

frereubu• 2 years ago

I like the Michael Pollan dictum: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I don't think you can go far wrong with that.

Abekkus• 2 years ago

For the food portion of that instruction, I'd tell people to "eat cells, not substances." Pasta and rice don't look good along that spectrum.

pfdietz2• 2 years ago

At some point I predict the endogenous pesticides in plants are going to be found to be very problematic. The famous Ames Test for mutagens goes off on them.

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ames-test-and-real...

Plants have evolved a variety of pesticides and antifeedant compounds, many of which are reactive and toxic at some level - therefore, most (as in 99.99%, according to his estimate) of the pesticides in the human diet are those found in the plants themselves. The cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, mustard and so on) are particularly rich in compounds that will light up an Ames test. A fine article of his from 1990 (Ang. Chem. Int. Ed.,29, 1197) states that ". . .it is probably true that almost every plant product in the supermarket contains natural carcinogens."

dang• 2 years ago

These flips seem to happen on a cycle of 20 or 30 years. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is roughly the generational cycle. My theory is that each new generation of researchers establishes itself by overturning the findings of the previous generation—especially the shakiest ones.

mattmein• 2 years ago

Reminds me of Planck's principle: > A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ...

autoexec• 2 years ago

I think a lot of it is just garbage science by people who were paid by some industry to come up with anything that could result in a snappy headline that might boost sales of their product, combined with media being perfectly happy to misrepresent even honest research if they can get a clickbait title out of it. "Science says Bad Thing you like is actually good for you!" is about as sure to generate clicks/views/ad impressions as "Science says Healthy Thing is actually killing you!"

With near zero accountability for bad science and journalism this situation isn't likely to change any time soon.

robwwilliams2• 2 years ago

No, I disagree that these flips are just moody periodic “flips of a coin”. The target article explains very clearly WHY the flip. Here are the three main reasons:

1. An ascertainment bias that is built in to studies that recruit and compare “non-drinkers” to light drinkers. Non-drinkers may not be as inherently healthy as light drinkers. They may have had adverse effects earlier in their lives due to alcohol.

2. Since the 1970s most of NIH research has focused on alcoholism and alcohol abuse—-not on the epidemiologucal impact of drinking alcohol. These are entire distinct topics. Alcoholism is treated as a “disease” in the same way as other addictions. But a significant majority of drinkers are not alcoholics, and what is the impact on mortality of alcohol use on all types of age related diseases.

3. There was a long-term phantasy that resveratrol in red wine is responsible for the French paradox metabolic benefits. That gas been debunked for a decade but still lives in our brains as a zombie meme.

brookst• 2 years ago

Well said, but I think some of this boils down to people who prefer prescriptive versus descriptive health and diet info.

I’m similar in that I’ll drink more or less based on environment; a vacation on the beach, I’ll probably drink more. A vacation in the Middle East, I’ll likely drink not at all.

But I don’t really care. I’ll enjoy drinks sometimes and skip others.

Some people really just want to have best practices defined for them, like they can be happy if they check the right boxes.

poincaredisk2• 2 years ago

But I don’t really care. I’ll enjoy drinks sometimes and skip others.

I am trying to interpret what you said in the best possible way, but I'm not sure how. Maybe you don't have alcohol problems, but some people do (like I used to) and they absolutely should control their alcohol intake. Maybe you don't have obesity problem, but some people do, and they absolutely should count calories.

Maybe you rebuttal is "obviously if you have problem with X you should improve your X", but then your statement comes off a vacuously true.

Even worse, your sage advice may make it worse and make people think that their alcoholism/obesity is not a problem, because they just eat/drink what they enjoy, as much as they want. Believe me, as a (former?) alcoholic, "it's ok to drink as long as you are great at your job and healthy" is exactly what I wanted to hear (and believe).

UniverseHacker5• 2 years ago

This... our understanding of biology is way too primitive to have a meaningful mechanistic understanding of what is healthy, and what is not. Most of the nutrition advice is based on simple observational correlations that are assuming a cause and effect that just isn't there. People with high cholesterol also tend to have more cardiovascular disease, but it turns out eating cholesterol and fat doesn't actually increase risk of cardiovascular disease. People who eat a lot of fish tend to have better health outcomes, but it turns out taking fish oil does not reproduce those outcomes, and so on and so on.

Scientific nutrition is mostly just "scientism" - an irrational overconfidence bordering on a religious faith in unfounded assumptions based on observational studies, without admitting what we don't know.

I think it is reasonable to avoid trying to make decisions about diet based on this stuff, but I think ideas like the paleo diet or evolutionary nutrition make a lot of sense- eat diets similar to those that humans have eaten safely for a long time, as those are what we are likely adapted to. Interestingly though this itself is massively diverse: there are hunter gatherer societies with almost every diet composition imaginable: from artic diets that are high protein and fat but nearly zero carb, to cultures like the kitavans whose diet is very high carb and low protein. Our metabolism is very adaptable and any diet that is mostly fresh nutrient dense foods from plant and/or animal sources is probably about equally healthy.

Ironically, the stress of worrying constantly about if your food is optimally healthy, is probably more harmful to your health than anything typically considered unhealthy.

NumberWangMan• 2 years ago

I don't think that the scientific consensus on nutrition as unsettled as you say. As an example, there are a lot of people making money selling various diets as well as promoting uncertainty and doubt around the issue, but there seems to be pretty definitive evidence in favor of cholesterol and fat increasing cardiovascular disease risk. People love to misrepresent studies, or cherry-pick poorly designed studies, and use them to claim that the consensus is wrong.

I'm not talking about observational studies either, but actual controlled feeding trials where they put you on a strictly controlled diet for a period of time.

Even if you look at what humans are evolved to eat -- evolution puts selective pressure on reproductive fitness. As a process, it does not put any pressure on you to live a long time, as long as you reproduce successfully (which is why insects like the mayfly can even exist). So looking at what primitive people ate does not really give us information about what is healthy if you want to live a long time (aside from avoiding things that are obviously immediately poisonous).

Even hunter gatherer tribes that eat a meat-and-dairy-heavy diet like the Maasai have been examined and have pretty significant cardiovascular disease -- but they are also so ridiculously active their blood vessels are much wider than people with a modern sedentary lifestyle, and that mostly balances out the narrowing from arterial plaque. Native people who eat a traditional diet heavy in whole grains, legumes, and tubers for calories have them beat by a mile when it comes to arterial health.

hombre_fatal2• 2 years ago

Even if you throw out the research that you mention, you'd still have to contend with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendelian_randomization which converges with that research and shows that ApoB is an independent causal factor for CVD, like https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7611924/ (random google result). And saturated fat increases ApoB. And Mendelian randomization over genes that increase the saturated fat -> cholesterol or ApoB relationship, or cholesterol and ApoB independently, result in more CVD.

The evidence and scientific consensus are still against your wishful thinking. Though these days with algorithmic doom-scroll feeds it can feel like there is no consensus.

I follow a lot of evidence based nutrition accounts on Twitter yet I still get recommended quacks like Shawn Baker and Nina Teicholz (carnivore diet charlatans) who make the same points you make to story-tell away the inconvenient truth. And I specifically avoid anti-science quackery. So I can imagine what the average person is seeing and why it seems like the science is reversing.

bushwald• 2 years ago

The agricultural lobby sold us things like the food pyramid which said eat more grain, for example. I think people have become more conscious of such manipulation and so things have turned around. Unfortunately, capital, as always, has figured out how to co-opt the change in attitudes as well as weird Internet fad diets (e.g., gluten free) to keep people buying from the middle of the store.

glenstein• 2 years ago

I find takes like this to be true in the specific details but wildly wrong as a big picture takeaway. A lot of people are citing their favorite quotes here, so here's one of mine from the Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov:

When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

So I think there's a relativity of wrong problem that you run into when suggesting it's all just so complex and leaving it at that.

I would nevertheless absolutely agree that nutrition science and communication around it has been disorganized, contradictory, and without much in the way of a north star or a reliable "vanguard" of communicators representing a firm consensus. I feel much better about public communication from, say, astrophysics, archeology, geology, etc. and I think there's a characteristic degree of stability of knowledge particular to each of those fields.

hobobaggins• 2 years ago

Fundamentally, the human body seems to be an incredibly complex system that is far more dynamic, rapidly changing, and with far more unpredictable interactions than any of those other fields.

It's fascinating that, at least on some axes, we might know less about core processes in our own bodies than we probably have already ascertained about planetary motion or materials composition from millions of miles away.

throwup2384• 2 years ago

So I think there's a relativity of wrong problem that you run into when suggesting it's all just so complex and leaving it at that.

The problem with talking about human variability is that everyone can be equally wrong just due to the natural distribution.

What if a 30% of people have metabolisms that work better with low-fat/high-carbs, 30% high-fat/low-carbs, and 40% are kinda just in the middle and don't care as long as macros are balanced? Depending on how your sample breaks down (or which group has the most lobbying capital when the rules are made), your nutrition guidance can flip flop, especially if the effects are subtle except over the long term. Without the ability to group them a priori, the results will be all over the place and may even be unstable depending on whose thumb is on the scale.

Psychiatry faces this problem but much worse. Tons of drugs do work, we just don't know which ones will work for which people so both the treatment protocol and the clinical trials are a complete mess.

taskforcegemini• 2 years ago

When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong.

yet earth is spherical, just not a perfect sphere.

stanleykm• 2 years ago

I had a similar drinking habit as you. Beer is more interesting to drink with food than water is. But it’s still a bunch of alcohol for your liver to deal with so probably not great for it. Low/no alcohol beers have gotten pretty good in recent years and I switched to those. I’ll still have alcohol in social settings, just not at home anymore (or rather much much much less)

JackMorgan• 2 years ago

I switched to kombucha with meals and way prefer it. It's got that tart sharp flavor but doesn't feel addicting in the same way.

throw463653• 2 years ago

Ehh. I rarely drank before the pandemic and now I essentially never drink. I don’t miss it at all. Wasn’t out at social events so I wasn’t drinking at all. I have probably drunk five, maybe ten units a year since. I consider it obvious that it’s generally unhealthy now.

I sort of lucked into a much healthier diet during the pandemic —- I had suspected Covid just before the UK lockdown, managed to get a supermarket delivery slot, panic-bought a load of healthy food and veg and then spent the next ten days reading recipes and rediscovering cooking for myself, as I tried to make things I could taste. Also developed quite a usefully healthy dependency on apples.

Both of these stuck, and I don’t really know why; habits are confusing to me because I am so disordered otherwise.

It’s interesting how the pandemic affected people in ways they might not have expected, with or without the benefits of furlough or the new-to-many experience of WFH.

CyberDildonics• 2 years ago

I would say people should have been more skeptical of the conventional wisdom that sugar is fine but fat is bad while obesity skyrocketed.

democracy• 2 years ago

Interesting, I started drinking much less with covid since stopped going to the pubs after work for non-stop celebrations of firings/hirings/bdays/babies/catchups etc...

7bit• 2 years ago

Point being is that no only am I skeptical of the claims of what I should and should not consume

Science does not that you that. It just tells you that there is no healthy amount of alcohol to consume. Science also tells you that there is no healthy amount of tan, but you still need the sun to get vitamin D. Leaving it still up to you what to do with that information.

ml-anon• 2 years ago

To your first paragraph partly because just about everything to do with health and nutrition communication and policy is overwhelmingly influenced by corporations and industries whose interests are not aligned with our health.

PaulDavisThe1st2• 2 years ago

For me, the best part of TFA was the final paragraph that went into the actual risks to individuals rather than a public health policy perspective.

Both viewpoints are entirely valid, but being reminded that the actual risk of dying from any of the mechanisms alcohol interacts with are very low to start with, so small increases in those risks does not add up to much ... per individual.

As a society of millions, of course, the product of the shift in probability and population is quite significant.

The difference between these two perspectives is often ignored, or at best elided.

advael• 2 years ago

Popular nutrition science has basically been advertising since both have existed. I view real health information as complicated and full of caveats and individual differences

Basically any medical advice you get from a headline or even a single study is a lie

tonymet2• 2 years ago

Popular nutrition science suffers from correlation fallacy. Unless they can explain the causal mechanism, or at least hypothesize, it's practically bankrupt.

Plus, there is a lot of incentive to transition self-medicators off of alcohol and nicotine and onto SSRIs, diabetes medication, anti-anxiety meds and more profitable products.

djhn• 2 years ago

Pretty sure alcohol has much higher margins. Most first, second and third line of treatment psych meds have been out of patent for a while now and cost pennies.

tonymet2• 2 years ago

You're missing the aggregate and lifetime opportunity .

generic92034• 2 years ago

On a different angle - why is alcoholism considered sinful by some branches of Christianity, but gluttony (which also gets criticized in the Bible) is basically ignored?

sandworm101• 2 years ago

Because the people making such rules are just human beings, subject to all the same associated inconsistencies.

hi-v-rocknroll2• 2 years ago

Religious folks would argue their rules appeared out of divine provenance. I say: pics or it didn't happen, and no cheating using ChatGPT.

joncp• 2 years ago

because one doesn't tend to get drunk on pie and then go beat up your wife or run over a pedestrian with your car. Is it biblical? No, but people rank sins by social impact out of habit.

dpig_• 2 years ago

People don't run over pedestrians because they smoked a cigarette, either, but church people view smoking in a similar way.

hi-v-rocknroll2• 2 years ago

Magical thinking is allowed to be selective.

Plus: "It is difficult to get [someone] to understand [obesity, chronic heart disease, strokes, arteriosclerosis, climate change, pandemics, antibiotic resistance, deforestation, environmental degradation, pollution, ultraprocessing malnutrition, and soaring food prices] when his [addiction to Big Macs] depends upon his not understanding it."

coolsunglasses• 2 years ago

Gluttony is definitely a sin in the Catholic Church and is one of the well known seven deadly sins.

felipeerias• 2 years ago

Alcoholism would be the sin of Gluttony (“Gula” in Latin), which is basically overindulgence and overconsumption.

The definition of this sin became rather expansive over the centuries, so it would also cover those who engage in obsessive anticipation of the things they consume, who spend too much on them, etc. One reason for this was that the gorging of the prosperous may leave the needy hungry.

So from that point of view, it seems to me that the sin of Gluttony is still routinely condemned by people of a Christian culture, even if they are not aware of this ancient framework.

Regarding your specific question, I would say that overeating to the point of causing hunger to others is still criticised. At the same time, assuming that there is enough food to go around, eating too much of it doesn’t cause the same negative externalities to others as drinking too much alcohol.

o11c• 2 years ago

Fun fact, the Bible doesn't actually call either a sin. The closest match is when Pharisees spoke against the fact that Jesus was doing them both, but they lacked sources.

Now, "temperance" (= "moderation") and "sobriety" (= "seriousness") are commands, but those are both orthogonal to alcohol consumption. Gluttony is likely related though, depending on definition.

Sects generally form (and mutate) in one of three ways:

1. We're facing some real problem, so I should invent something to fix it.

2. There's something I want to do that current traditions disallow, so I'll make my own traditions with blackjack and hookers.

3. I should be the one in charge.

#1 is a good fit here - the problems of excessive alcohol consumption (and human inability to stop after just a little) are well-attested through the ages, even before automobiles expanded the ability to kill others.

swat535• 2 years ago

Practicing Catholic here, Alcholism _is_ Gluttony FYI. Consuming too much of _anything_ is considered Gluttony and more to your point, it's not really ignored.

That being said, its one of the capital vices and many people focus on the mortal sins first since venial sins can be curbed easier.

There's often discussions about it at Churches, especially during Lent.

jack_h• 2 years ago

It seems like people are trying to min-max their lives and in doing so are missing the forest for the trees. Not a single drop of alcohol is healthy, not a single photon hitting bare skin is healthy, etc.

In the end life is full of unknowns. There are people in their 90s who drink like a fish and smoke like a chimney. There are people who led a very healthy lifestyle and died in their 40s. Don't forget to enjoy life while trying to make it last as long as possible.

"Everything in moderation, including moderation." -Oscar Wilde

paulryanrogers9• 2 years ago

not a single photon hitting bare skin is healthy

For vitamin D it'll be more unhealthy to never get sunlight exposure.

UniverseHacker5• 2 years ago

This- people are 'min-maxing' on single isolated dimensions, and not looking at the bigger picture. Sun does a lot more than increase vitamin D, it also increases metabolic rate by acting directly on the mitochondria, lowers blood pressure, calibrates the circadian rhythm, coordinates eye development, and many other vitally important things.... and it turns out the most of the most deadly types of skin cancer aren't even caused by sun exposure.

When you unnaturally radically alter your diet, physical environment, or lifestyle to an extreme outside of normal human experience based on trying to optimize a single variable in attempt to be healthier, it is almost guaranteed to backfire.

scottlamb• 2 years ago

I think you're making the parent's point that you should be suspicious of the extremes.

But just for completeness: you can satisfy your vitamin D need through diet, particularly oily fish like sardines and salmon. At least I hope so, because for various scheduling/remote work/family reasons I don't get a lot of daylight these days. I run and bike outside, but generally not during peak daylight hours.

rhinoceraptor2• 2 years ago

It seems like it's a similar thing to sugar. The optimal amount of alcohol or sugar is not absolutely zero, a lot of foods we eat that are healthy have them, just at much lower concentrations and lower amounts.

A glass of orange juice is about the equivalent sugar of two large oranges, without any of the fiber to slow the digestion. Similarly, a beer is about the equivalent ethanol of an entire loaf of bread, without any of the fiber to slow the digestion.

paulryanrogers9• 2 years ago

Alcohol has no nutritional benefits. And there is a significant population of people who cannot metabolize alcohol. So there are definitely at least some for whom none is the optimal amount

AtlasBarfed2• 2 years ago

The top dominant comment is the predictable "msm reported x was bad now it's good they don't know anything".

What a waste of a thread. Of course msm science reporting is trash I can get that discussion on a bad reddit thread.

Alcohol is a poison, a fairly tolerable one. It's also an addictive drug on social, biochemical, and emotional levels. And likely something that there has been coevolution with humans over the thousands of years it has been ingrained into society.

The optimal amount of alcohol is zero, because nutritionally it is completely replaceable with better options, any of the enzyme/relaxation effects are either replaced with no alcohol alternatives or far better done with exercise.

The entire thread has pro alcohol compartmentalized thinking hallmarks of addictive patterns: don't say bad things about the precious, dismiss the risks, trump up by 100x fringe studies of alleged health benefit. It's like reading /r/trees on reddit.

Now will it kill you from a single shot?no. Is alcohol one of the major millennium spanning means of getting people to procreate, a not insignificant aspect of general societal demographic health? Probably.

rhinoceraptor2• 2 years ago

If you say the optimal amount of is zero, it means you pretty much can't eat any fermented food like kimchi, kombucha, etc. Obviously there's a huge difference between that and an alcoholic beverage, I would agree the optimal amount of alcoholic beverages is likely zero or very close to it.

mapt• 2 years ago

I doubt you could hear the call of such an effect over the roar of other confounders:

Regular moderate wine consumption is a strong correlate of comfortable, non-suburban living, particularly in a post-MADD world. Generally speaking, drive less on a daily basis, walk more on a daily basis, have better cardiovascular health and less obesity, live longer. This is a significant EU/US delta.

In the US wine is not the cheapest way to get drunk, nor is it as socially popular in disadvantaged minority groups. The health issues associated with poverty & healthcare/nutrition access are less significant in wine drinkers, and the lifestyle of those statistically drawn to wine as a beverage of choice is correlated with lower stress levels.

These aren't new or novel observations, but when we're talking about very weak effects, even the uncertainty bounds on known confounders start to dominate.

levocardia• 2 years ago

No mention at all of the strongest type of study on alcohol consumption: Mendelian randomization studies [1]. These avoid the problems of self-report, recall bias, etc., that confound most nutritional epidemiology.

[1] e.g. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

vintermann3• 2 years ago

Yes. And Mendelian randomization studies are a relatively new invention, as these things go. They're the reason for the "flip flop".

imoverclocked2• 2 years ago

Policy is always a hard thing to write because of its vast numbers of people trying to interpret it. Writing a policy that states "no alcohol is the best" will look like an overly draconian statement to a country that has a problem with alcohol consumption.

Alcohol is largely normalized as a party element in the US as opposed to just being an extra flavor at the dinner table. IMHO, the culture around drinking is likely what needs to change. Maybe we can shift from the "yes or no" category of the world to the "a sip might be nice to pair with X" model instead.

ls6123• 2 years ago

Or maybe people learned about the ills of Prohibition in school and have bad memories of the War on Drugs and so a policy statement like that can sound like a threat of things to come?

That's what gets me about all this alcohol discourse, we tried this already. We passed a damn constitutional amendment, then repealed it 13 years later because it was so bad. Something something learning from the past or doomed to repeat it.

imoverclocked2• 2 years ago

I would argue that both of those examples are still , "yes or no" instead of "moderation as part of our views." You can't force a society to be moderate through policy; The problem isn't policy, it's the culture surrounding alcohol.

Think of how many instances of people getting @^*%-faced drunk with a group of friends is the basis of a large-grossing movie in the US. Now think of how many instances having a sip to drink at dinner with friends is the basis of a similarly grossing movie in the US. We glorify drinking to excess in our media/entertainment as well as so many conversations I have been privy to over the years... mostly my younger years but not exclusively.

horns4lyfe• 2 years ago

Great, so don’t write policy around it. We don’t have to.

ramijames• 2 years ago

It's a poison. Of course it isn't good for you. Jfc.

goatlover• 2 years ago

Is it though? Are you saying it has no positive benifits, because lots of consumers and researchers would argue otherwhise.

Anyway, I don't care. If I want to have a drink, I will, because I enjoy alcohol. Not always, but sometimes. What does irritate me are the teetotallers. They lost the argument over prohibition, thankfully. But they never went away.

The war on drugs people are losing the same argument.

paulryanrogers9• 2 years ago

Alcohol is a disinfectant. Someday humans may adapt to tolerate consumption of other solvents. Doubtful that any will have significant benefits. IMO the (subjective) advantages of alcohol's effect on some brains is far outweighed by the disadvantages / societal costs. If it weren't historically accepted I doubt it would be any more legal than other regulated/illegal psychedelics.

1970-01-01• 2 years ago

You're completely dismissing all mental and social benefits by doing this. Confusing alcohol consumption with alcohol abuse is like saying of course antibiotics are not good for you.

robwwilliams2• 2 years ago

This is a brilliant overview! i have worked in a small slice of this field for 20 years (genetics of alcoholism). This article provides a much broader context for me to think about my research, and a context and history that I find totally believable.

dluan2• 2 years ago

"More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette"

This is like asking "is a hammer healthy?" Alcohol is a tool. It evolved alongside humans as human social needs changed, like kava in a circle of elders or tobacco in a peace/war pipe, or wormwood left to soak in wine made by Spanish priests as a catchall for ailments.

"No bus usage is healthy", "some social media scrolling is recommended per day", "FDA recommends 1 dose of powersaws" - these kinds of pronouncements fail to understand how alcohol came about.

paulryanrogers9• 2 years ago

Alcohol tolerance probably evolved for survival since fruit ferments as it ages. Doubtful social needs were a big factor in that evolution, especially since plenty of humans still lack the ability to metabolize it.

I would agree though that some studies and their conclusions are garbage. That doesn't mean science cannot be advanced by better studies and experiments.

dluan2• 2 years ago

It is a tool with many uses. Sailors and early pioneers who couldn't carry water for long distances used ale to to stay hydrated. The same sailors were given a daily tot of rum to maintain morale.

Many medicinal compounds and molecules are only soluble in ethanol, and so many early medicines resemble amaro decoctions that people still drink recreationally today. These medical uses convergently evolved across cultures and geographies.

Doing business or politics over wine or shochu was useful because alcohol removes social inhibitions that would otherwise hide things in negotiations.

It's also just an important way to preserve calories of harvested fruits and grains that would otherwise spoil, which is why in some places it was used as currency in place of gold.

ruraljuror• 2 years ago

Sure. It's a tool that makes you worse at most things and poisons your body when you drink it, but has proven effective at date rape. It has evolved? I will grant that humans have a complex history with it, but you are mischaracterizing an unhealthy and dangerous drug.

9dev• 2 years ago

How alcohol came about it entirely irrelevant when discussing effects on society and recommendations on consumption.

A hammer that, when you use it on a certain, individual, previously unknown, amount of nails, will nefariously and permanently influence your brain to nudge you to use a hammer more often, even when you would actually need any other kind of tool; that is not a hammer I would recommend anyone to use.

Alcohol has all kinds of complex and negative interactions with people. It makes young people more violent and reckless, for example; it is used to lessen the pain of psychological issues and sadness, to the users detriment; it causes people to say and do things they regret later. Sure, it also loosens you up, which can help some time, but characterising alcohol as a tool is at best a gross mischaracterisation and at worst self deception.

StanislavPetrov• 2 years ago

Seems most likely to me that, like many things, alcohol probably has both beneficial and detrimental effects. Additionally, different substances are going to effect different people in different ways and to different degrees. Hypothetically, let's say a substance raised your chance of cancer, but lowered your chance of a heart attack. Is that substance, "good for you"? Would it be good for those (on balance) who were predisposed to having heart attacks, but (on balance) bad for people who weren't? The more studies we do the better, but it is rarely as simple as "good for you" or "bad for you".

bill_from_tampa• 2 years ago

I vividly remember being in a pathology lab session in 1973 when the Prof pulled the organs out of a formalin jar of a patient who died from micronodular cirrhosis or Lanneac's disease -- he pointed out that the aorta and other major blood vessels were quite smooth and showed no or extremely minimal atherosclerotic plaques. This type of cirrhosis in generally caused by intemperate alcohol use. The Prof said in his experience in doing autopsies, and he had done thousands, persons who had been alcoholics seemed to have very smooth arteries, almost as if alcohol, somehow, protected against the development of atherosclerotic plaque and the sequelae of such deposits.

But remember, these specimens were collected from dead persons, people who had died from something, usually something caused by alcohol. So even if alcohol consumption somehow protects one against atherosclerotic plaque, there are many other manifestations of alcohol use that can kill you, and leave your friendly neighborhood pathologist musing about your wonderfully clean arteries, while your organs lie, dead and removed from your rotting corpse, on the demonstration table.

This is so depressing, I'm going to have a drink,

LoganDark• 2 years ago

Enjoy the drink.

aeternum• 2 years ago

Like everything in life, moderation seems to be the key.

Especially with alcohol it can be difficult to moderate due to social pressure and such. Many friends seems to acknowledge that light drinking isn't harmful, but given they don't see that as an option.

For many that grew up in US drinking culture, the choice is surprisingly binary: binge drink or abstain completely.

KennyBlanken• 2 years ago

For many that grew up in US drinking culture, the choice is surprisingly binary: binge drink or abstain completely.

Half of Americans don't drink regularly, which is several times the abstaining population in the UK (for example.) Of those who do, 24% binge drink and 6.2% have more than two drinks a day. every day of the week.

That works out to 12% and 3% respectively.

https://alcohol.org/professions/

I don't have data for the US, but in the UK, the alcohol industry makes most of its profits off alcoholics, with harmful/hazardous drinkers making up 25% of the drinking population, but ~66% of its profits.

https://www.recoveryanswers.org/research-post/alcohol-sales-...

~4% (the harmful drinkers) drink one third of all the alcohol sold in the UK.

Heavy drinkers tend to not move from whatever bar they start at, and this is why "happy hour" exists. It's literally bars 'bidding' over who gets the alcoholics for the night. That's why some states have banned the practice.

jocoda• 2 years ago

What stands out for me is how often drinking is shown as an integral activity in the media. And most of us don't even notice. Come home from work, kick back and pour a drink.

Do the same with a cigarette nowadays and most would do a double take.

bitnasty• 2 years ago

In 50 years, the AI will tell us that looking at screens all day is actually good for you.

stagas• 2 years ago

Whatever benefits you think you're feeling when you're consuming alcohol, are actually the baseline if you live a non-alcoholic life. It makes itself relevant by making you feel worse the rest of the time, until you consume it. When you give it up and after a few months when your liver has healed, the buzz/happiness you felt while consuming alcohol becomes your normal again. You don't need it, and you never did. It's a poison of the mind and the body.

toomanyrichies• 2 years ago

"It's no longer a question of staying healthy, it's a question of finding a sickness you like."

-Jackie Mason

The flip-flop on whether alcohol is good for you (2023)

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