[tristanj]

>Alcohol in the absence of polyunsaturated fats is fairly benign.

This isn't true. Sorry to inform you but Ethanol is a IARC Group 1 Carcinogen. There is no safe amount of consumption of ethanol. When Ethanol enters the body, it is metabolized into Acetaldehyde, which enters the bloodstream, and later another enzyme metabolizes Acetaldehyde into harmless Aceitc Acid.

Acetaldehyde also a Group 1 Carcinogen. Acetaldehyde is a tiny molecule and when in the bloodstream, Acetaldehyde can pass through any cell membrane unregulated, and when it enters the cell nucleus it causes irreparable DNA damage https://www.sciencealert.com/alcohol-damages-dna-stem-cells-... .

When cells accumulate too much damage to their DNA, they either die or (very rarely) start replicating uncontrollably, leading to a situation known as cancer.

I reccomend you read how Ethanol is processed by the body here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_metabolism . You can see that the process by which the human body metabolizes Ethanol always produces carcinogens, no matter the presence of fried foods, margarine, vegetable oils.

[tejtm]

So glad to see this stated so clearly

will take one exception which is to: ~Acetaldehyde causes irreparable DNA damage~

This is not 100% we all repair this damage all the time (usually) however not needing to repair excess damage is preferable.

Note: ethanol is not the only source of aldehydes in our diet even if it is a potent one, paraphrasing a medical researcher friend "anything that tastes good will metabolize through an aldehyde phase"

Our genetics, the dose and blind luck will determine if the damage is repairable.

For an example of genetics and ethanol mediated DNA damage/repair see Asian Flushing syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction

Yeast produced ethanol as a toxin to inhibit other things from eating what they were eating, it was only ~10M years ago something was hungry enough to eat the poison and lucky enough to have mutated to derive nutrition from the toxin.

but hey, oxygen use to be a toxin too.

[klmr]

> but hey, oxygen use to be a toxin too.

It still is. Oxidative stress is a major threat to cells. There’s a lot of expensive machinery to keep the damage in check but it’s not foolproof.