[estaseuropano]

I don't think that misstates the lancet article, and i also think this information in the lancet article is useful.

There is a long belief that e.g. red wine is good for the heart, or in many places there are some herb liquors that old people drink thinking it will bring them benefits. Here the lancet unequivocally states that to our best evidence no alcohol is best. You're from now on not drinking red wine for your heart but for pleasure.

[vanusa]

Here the lancet unequivocally states that to our best evidence no alcohol is best.

The thing is this proscription is essentially useless. It's like saying "to our best evidence no sugar is best".

So should you eat that piece of chocolate cake or should you not?

You're from now on not drinking red wine for your heart but for pleasure.

We knew that already. But it still doesn't tell us whether drinking, say, 3 or fewer glasses of wine per week has a significant negative health impact or not. For any actual measure of "significant".

[nuclearnice1]

Maybe figure 4 from the Lancet article [1] mentioned above is helpful here. It is titled “Relative risk curves for selected conditions by number of standard drinks consumed daily.”

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[vanusa]

Interesting graphs.

What's interesting in particular is that for several categories (such as ischemic heart disease) the relative risk does seem to go down rather decisively for up to 6(!) standard drinks per day (which they note is "offset" by the increased risk in other categories -- including cancer).

So going by their own combined/weighted risk in Figure 5 - we see a curve that is essentially flat in the region between 0 and 1 - that is, showing negligible risk (asymptotically zero) at 1 drink per day, rising to more concerning levels starting at 2 or 3 per day.

And that's the decisive issue here: "Is having an average of 1 drink per day really any more risky than 0 per day?" The only take-way I can get from the article is that there's essentially no difference in risk level in this interval.