[codelap]

Drinking alcohol has many health benefits. Even a beer a day, something that 'common sense' would lead you to think was unhealthy, demonstrates to be good for your overall health. And eating processed foods while smoking and drinking would likely be more detrimental than eating well, while smoking and drinking. The hard part is determining what eating well is.

[zxcdw]

> The hard part is determining what eating well is.

Eating well in seven words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.". ...where "food" is defined more or less as: "as little processed as available, mostly plant-based food in as close to it's natural form as possible".

[codelap]

But that's kinda my point, we don't know that, anymore than we know an all meat diet is okay for us. Most of the "science" around nutrition would only be acceptable in theoretical physics and paleontology. We're starting to see nutrition studied a little better, but it's the past half decade where we seeing actual science around nutrition, and we'll need at least a couple hundred years before we can say with certainty what is best for human longevity. Until then, we're guessing.

We think cholesterol is bad in excess, and conventional wisdom dictates, that since eggs are high in cholesterol, that eggs should be avoided. Except, the body doesn't metabolize much if any dietary cholesterol, and instead it's the cholesterol that you synthesize that's dangerous. There are some interesting observations with high fat dairy, which actually reduces cholesterol instead of increasing it. Again, conventional wisdom is demonstrating itself to not be correct. Calories in, calories out sounds good on paper, eat less, and you will lose weight. But this also is proven incorrect over and over. I have seen this in studies, and witnessed it first hand with a girl I was living with who was trying to lose weight. She would eat a fifth of the calories that I would eat, and would gain weight, where I would chow down on meat, fats, and green beans and lose weight. What does appear to be apparent is it's easier to maintain a healthy weight if you never gain weight in the first place; essentially your body attempts to return to it's heaviest when calories are available. Many new studies show that the war on salt is based in bad science, and it may not have as much of an impact as we thought. So is a little haiku the answer? I don't know what the right answer is, but I know it isn't that simple.

[Thrymr]

Citation: Michael Pollan: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....

[stdbrouw]

People keep yapping on about the health benefits of alcohol, red wine in particular, but I'd be impressed if you could find me a single drinker who only ever drinks that one unit of alcohol a day. At that point it very quickly stops being beneficial to your health.

[cobrausn]

I typically drink one glass of red wine a night, occasionally two if dinner is particularly good. Feel free to be impressed.

[mikeash]

This, of course, also describes about 80% of the population of France.

[oneeyedpigeon]

Where do you live? I'm fascinated by your use of the word 'drinker', as if people who ever drink any alcohol aren't in the vast majority. Where I live (UK), pretty much everyone drinks alcohol at least weekly. Most people drink socially, within healthy boundaries (3-4 units per day is the current guideline), occasionally overindulging, often detoxing for a period of time. Whilst there are social problems caused by alcohol abuse, there is no way that in our society we would 'look down' on each other for consuming alcohol, nor define anyone as a 'drinker'. In my whole life I've met 2 people who are not 'drinkers', and one of them has a very rare drink from time-to-time.

As to your point, yes, of course hardly anyone who ever drinks never drinks more than one unit of alcohol per day; that is practically impossible. But many will drink on average, no more than one unit per day.

[anigbrowl]

I drink one bottle of beer with dinner each day. Now and again I have two or even three, but that's only a few times a year.

Certainly, when I was younger I used to engage in more recreational/social drinking, ie going to a bar or a party, but I got tired of it.

[mikeash]

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that light drinkers inevitably become heavy drinkers, and thus the benefits of light drinking are irrelevant?

[Dewie]

That might depend heavily on the kind of culture that you live in.