How our society treats alcohol and tobacco is fascinating to me. Alcohol is known to cause all sorts of terrible health outcomes, yet our society glorifies it's consumption. Getting hammered in college / university is seen as a right of passage. Ads for alcohol are filled with sexy cool people drinking and partying. Our media portrays drinking as cool. Many people could not fathom having a celebratory moment without alcohol.<p>This was exactly where we were with tobacco in the 1950s. Ask a random person today if they think that efforts done to curb tobacco usage we're "good" they would probably say yes. We agree that glorifying tobacco consumption was bad. Attempts to brand tobacco as cool through figures as Joe Camel are viewed as stupid, we are much smarter and more enlightened now. Yet we don't apply the same critical lens to a Budweiser commerical where a guy pops open a bottle and is immediately surrounded by cool friends and beautiful women.
And yet, meta-analyses have found that wine, particularly red wine, has little effect on many cancers -- or in some cases even a protective effect, such as in prostate cancer:<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5909789/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5909789/</a><p>Lung cancer:<p><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18006934/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18006934/</a><p>Renal cell carcinoma:<p><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22516951/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22516951/</a>
<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25965820/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25965820/</a><p>No effect of wine on gastric cancer risk:<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5716786/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5716786/</a><p>No effect on colorectal cancer:<p><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30247171/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30247171/</a><p>No effect on epithelial ovarian cancer:<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2895710/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2895710/</a>
There are a lot of things that are risky that I do all the time. I’m surprised marijuana has such widespread praise given burning organic material, inhaling it deeply, and keeping it for long periods of time in your lungs is obviously dangerous. Grilled and smoked meat - with charred material slowly snaking its way through your intestines - is definitely extremely dangerous.<p>But I enjoy alcohol, I like how it impacts social situations, I like the taste. Jesus did turn water into wine, after all. Traces of beer and wine go back perhaps ten thousand years. It’s not something a warning label will change for me, and we already tried prohibition. Life is hard enough without having to worry about every last damn thing.
One area where alcohol could be improved is by requiring food labels. Just how much sugar and calories are in your drink? Finding answers to this is a bit opaque, so having a bit more transparency would be great.
One thing that would be helpful in making this type of decision is to know the impact on average life expectancy. For instance, cigarettes shorten one's life by an average of 13 years. Most would agree that 13 years is an absolutely massive number.<p>According to this one source, the average lifespan of a drinker consuming 10-15 drinks a week is shortened by 1-2 years: <a href="https://www.nationaltasc.org/years-drinking-take-away-from-life/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nationaltasc.org/years-drinking-take-away-from-l...</a><p>Warnings are important, but giving people clear data on the consequences of their decisions are is important too.
All organic solvents are a cancer risk for the same reason: they imitate water (an inorganic solvent) inside our cells, but they're not water. Therefore, every single chemical reaction inside the cell is a bit different. Whether inhibited or triggered, or slowed, or sped up. So more reactions are likely to go wrong; perhaps creating free radicals that can rip up any molecule they touch, including DNA.<p>We are immensely better than other mammals at coping with alcohol (which yeast uses to poison other organisms and so preserve its food sources such as fruit.) Our livers prioritize neutralizing and excreting alcohol; letting other chemicals pile up meanwhile. Hence, just about any medication becomes more toxic if you drink alcohol at the same time.<p>We like the brain effects, but in truth every chemical reaction in the body is affected.<p>Speculating, however: some of the cancer risk from modern alcohol sources, however, may come from very long storage. Wine put down for more than the three years nec to sediment out lousy-tasting tannins continues to form Frankenstein flavor molecules (flavinoids) that have unusual tastes because they're random, they don't occur in nature. While flavinoids promote health, the Frankenstein versions of them likely don't and may be a potent extra source of cancer risk, even though we highly value those rare, weird flavors. Evolution hasn't necessarily shaped us to cope with these novel molecules, since we wouldn't have encountered them.<p>Of course, wine retains many of the very significant health-enhancing virtues of grape juice so it may often not do net harm (esp if the wine hasn't been put down for too long) but you can also buy grape juice.
I can't seem to find any info on whether or not the risk disappears if/when you give up drinking. Or is the DNA roulette wheel already spinning, like it is for people who have been heavy smokers in the past?<p>I think it's going to be harder for people to take on board the idea that <i>any amount</i> of alcohol is bad for you as, intuitively, I still believe that, in moderation, it can have some positive affects such as de-stressing and aiding sleep. Mind you, I suppose you could say some of the same about smoking and I can intuitively accept that any amount of that is bad for you.<p>Well, I've never smoked [tobacco] and [apart from a bit of a 'sociable relapse' over Christmas] haven't drunk for over a year now. So I should live forever!
This appears to be the actual CCSA study that led to the "no safe amount" conclusion: <a href="https://www.ccsa.ca/canadas-guidance-alcohol-and-health-final-report" rel="nofollow">https://www.ccsa.ca/canadas-guidance-alcohol-and-health-fina...</a><p>I haven't read the report in detail so I can't comment on the methodology. Some salient points:<p>• I don't see an actual recommendation that no alcohol is safe. The conclusion is that there is a continuum of risk, and that 3-6 drinks per week carries "moderate" risk.<p>• The risk model output is presented on Pages 25 (females) and 26 (males).<p>• The risk model appears to include both long-term health risks as well as short-term risks such as injury due to accident or violence that occurred while intoxicated with alcohol.<p>• The risk model is developed using meta-analysis of several pre-existing studies.<p>• The "2 drinks or less" recommendation is shown on the chart on Page 29, which shows the lifetime risk of year-of-life-lost as an increasing function of weekly average alcohol consumption. 2 drinks is approximately the crossover point where the risk goes above baseline.
I’d be delighted if everything that was as risky as tobacco, asbestos, alcohol, etc had health warnings. Same with foods: full dietary info, plus excess sugar/fat/etc labelling.<p>Only 25-30% of Canadians know that alcohol carries a cancer risk. A lot of Canadians drink well in excess of “safe” limits. Informing the public allows everyone to make a conscious choice about a significantly risky product.<p>No one knows these things intuitively: they need to encounter that information repeatedly before they will know it well enough to use that information in making a decision. Adding a written warning on the bottle label is a sensible, inexpensive, effective way to accomplish this.<p>I want to be more informed, not less.
I figure it’s pretty easy enough to show correlation but how many people are self medicating undiagnosed issues? Surely that would significantly color the stats.
I think the Canadian report it references is here: <a href="https://www.ccsa.ca/sites/default/files/2023-01/LRDG%20Lifetime%20risk%20of%20alcohol%20attributable%20death%20and%20disability.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.ccsa.ca/sites/default/files/2023-01/LRDG%20Lifet...</a><p>I might be being dumb but does anyone understand the graphs on page 18? There are multiple lines for different consumption levels but the x axis is also consumption level? I also don't understand why everything is piece-wise linear. It makes me think they don't actually have very high quality data? Maybe people just self selecting buckets?
This will never end.<p>There is a sector of the economy that lives off banning and regulating things, and it will constantly need new prey to prosper.<p>If you think this is good or bad is a separate issue.
Oh yeah, because "contains chemicals known the state of california" really helps us all out.<p>Come on, aren't there real problems to solve? Do we have grid scale battery storage yet? Are we building more GenIV nuclear reactors? Do we have environmentally friendly desalinization? Let's not waste our breath on dumb crap like this.<p>This is a distraction.
Labelling alcohol with a message that states that acetaldehyde is carcinogenic I have no issue with.<p>However, if this is going to be anything like smoking, the labels won't be there for the sake of informing, they'll be there as an emotional appeal. They'll start out as "surgeon general recommends", then they'll become high contrast, then they'll start putting gross pictures on it, then all beer bottles will be one colour and hidden away behind a counter.<p>If pubs end up having to have pint glasses with a picture of an inflated liver or something equally disgusting it would frankly not be informational but abusive.<p>It'd be an attempt to shame people into submission.<p>I fully expect to see this within my lifetime and it honestly just sickens me. Fuck off, man, just give me the information and let me decide.
If "no amount of alcohol is safe", we should put cancer warnings on bread and fruit: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5421578/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5421578/</a>
But what is the actual risk? I can't find any specific information. It says in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer</a> that in Europe 10% of cancers in males is due to alcohol, but is this mainly from heavy drinking, the two bottles of whisky a day type? It would be good to know what the risk of moderate drinking is, for example 15 units per week, it would be good if this were in an understandable number like the average years of good health lost.
Personal/un-scientific opinion. It's worth trying going on/off alcohol to see the effects on your sleep, mental health, behavior, and honestly finances.<p>I'm trying no alcohol Jan (like a lot of people) and I've been noticing the effects on my sleep, mental health and the $$$ saved.<p>Similar to skipping coffee, a week or so every year. It's good to just introspect and question your defaults.<p>You'll learn something about yourself.<p>Similar to eating meat, maybe we are better off just eating less of it. Just my two cents.
Well, we all already know alcohol does more harm than broccoli. If that isn't enough to stop someone drinking it, why would cancer warning labels?
Is there a study showing countries with differences in life expectancies between countries with low or high alcohol consumption? Given that we've had prohibition in the US before and that couldn't have gone worst, I feel like the society-level considerations are very relevant here.
Do other countries already have them? Honestly, it probably wouldn't change my habits but who knows, it might get me from 8 to 7 drinks per week or so.<p>What I find interesting is that it's so much worse for women, moralistic messaging about changing behavior specifically for women could backfire.
I don't really care if they put these warnings on. But that presents a problem: If a low-level drinker who is reasonably interested in his health doesn't care about the warnings, will anyone? And if no one cares, why bother?<p>Was there a significant drop in smoking when they added warnings?
What's the purpose of these warnings? Do they even save lives or just make these bureaucrats feel productive? If they really want to save lives, they need to find the cure to cancer. Do more work there.