"Outright quackery", really? It seems that you haven't been following recent developments. All the quackery is proven to be coming from FDA - vilifying salt, alcohol, saturated fats, animal protein for decades with no scientific proof.
Abuse of alcohol (or anything) is harmful. Two glasses of red wine a day have proven benefits. Drink a few gallons of water and you'll die. I hope you get my point. Toxicity and harmfulness is all about the dose. Eating a small piece of bread cannot harm you, getting way too much fast carbs in your diet is without any doubt harmful.
I think that if you truly believe in the narrative that you're espousing, and you actually want to do some good, you should start qualifying your statements with facts and changing the tone that you present them with.
Spewing vitriol because someone disagreed with you and down-voted only serves to illegitimatize the statement you're trying to make.
Which is a shame because behind that facade of angst and unqualified opinion is a kernel of relevant truth.
Not really the case. My karma here doesn't pay my bills or has any practical benefit to me or anyone. I don't really care about it as I never downvote, which is the only practical use of karma. So, I read something and because I've been following the new movements in health and nutrition in the past 10 years and investing a couple of hours a day to keep up, then I invest time in giving some seeds of thought for others and then downvotes start to pile up. I made clarifications and then I get even more downvotes on each of them usually having the same negative score on each post, which means that it's the same people downvoting every single one! This is not a dialog, this is a sort of punishment for thinking differently. Some people just can't help their aggressiveness, I guess. It's not the karma I care about, it's the lack of any appreciation of other people's efforts and their good intentions; it's the downhill movement of this community. It's just turning into a much less popular version of Reddit, unfortunately. Honestly, if there was no YCombinator brand behind it, it would have self-destructed itself long ago, but thanks to Paul Graham's halo and YCombinator brand, the agony will be forever. Recently, most of the top posts are copied from ProductHunt, which is very indicative of the decline. Learn from the biggest - Facebook and Twitter don't have downvote, dislike, distweet, and similar means of social punishment! The negative vibe would always destroy a community or, at least, make it unhealthy.
Two glasses of red wine is a harmful amount of alcohol.
This "wine is beneficial" is nonsense. Feel free to provide some cites. You'll find, once you read the papers that i: you don't need the alcohol for some of the benefits, you'd get the same from grape juice and ii: the amount of alcohol needed for benefits is about one glass per week.
By recommending "two glasses" per day (a glass should be 125 ml but most people pour much more than that. Try it yourself and see. And wine varies in strength. Currently wine is getting a bit weaker than it has been, but it's still pretty strong. Most wines are going to be around 12% ABV to 15% ABV. Two glasses of that a day is harmful.)
"In the largest prospective study ever conducted for alcohol, involving nearly a half million subjects, sponsored by the American Cancer Society... The overall death rates were lowest among men and women reporting about one drink daily."
There are other findings from that study which support the health benefits of regular, moderate consumption as well. All levels of alcohol consumption (even 6+ drinks per day!) were found to be associated with lower overall mortality than abstinence.
I'm not advocating anstinence. I'm advocating for knowing how much you're actually drinking, and making sure you drink less than "two glasses of wine a day" - note that two glasses of wine maybe the equivalent of five or six drinks a day.
> The overall death rates were lowest among men and women reporting about one drink daily. Mortality from all causes increased with heavier drinking, particularly among adults under age 60 with lower risk of cardiovascular disease.
The article talks about research but misrepresents that research.
While the death rates for people drinking six drinks per days are lower than for people who abstain the rates are higher than for people who drink one drink a day.
And one drink is probably much smaller than people realise: 125 ml wine at 8% ABV is one drink. 175 ml at 14.5% (much more typical of what people actually drink) is 2.5 units; two glasses is 5 units.
> And one drink is probably much smaller than people realise: 125 ml wine at 8% ABV is one drink.
What is your source for this? The NIH defines a standard drink of wine as 5 oz or about 150ml at 12%. I agree that many people pour more than that since it's less than a cup of wine (about 250ml).
I agree with the general sentiment that you should be aware of how much you're drinking, but as the article points out, mortality rate from "alcohol-augmented conditions" is barely a blip until you hit 4-5 drinks daily. It is a U-shaped curve with the most deadly conditions being abstinence and seriously heavy drinking. Given that, I think just being roughly aware of your intake goes a long way.
I would love to know how the delta in mortality between 1 daily drink (the optimal) and 5 stacks up against mortality from other common behaviors. I'd hazard a guess that an extra 4 drinks a day is actually less dangerous than obesity or lack of exercise. And yet many people seem a lot more afraid of the effects of having two beers a day than they are of skipping the gym!
So, the French are doing it all wrong then - eating too much saturated fat and drinking way too much wine? Maybe they should start measuring exactly the alcohol content and use standard measuring cylinders? Again, this is the oversimplification of human metabolism. Maybe two glasses are too much for your own weak system, but for healthy people it's not much at all and pay attention to the study - people who had more were still fine. Also, pay attention again - drinking wine with a meal (especially something as fatty as cheese) is not the same as drinking it on empty stomach - something you're totally missing in your "guidelines". Also, drinking alone and in a social setting makes a difference, too.
One of the studies even observed pregnant women, but their dose was one glass per day, and still registered health benefits.
Anyway, I personally don't need any studies as something that's been on the table of virtually all ethnicities for thousands of years, I think, is a "study" that surpasses all others!
There is little evidence that the alcohol in the red wine is what gives benefits. It's a possible avenue of study (does moderate consumption of alcohol improve health by relaxing & reducing stress levels?) but the current belief is some of the other chemicals are the key. Otherwise two shots of vodka should render the same health benefit.
Beer has its benefits, too, unless it gets abused, too, or is totally adulterated like most modern beer. Is it the alcohol or the phytochemicals in the alcoholic beverages - I really don't care. Vilifying alcohol in general is what I care about. Tylenol is the leading cause of liver failure in the States, yet, doctors still prescribe it and it's OTC. Why not ban something that's proven to be harmful? I won't even mention Lipitor and similar!
