Wording is very careful to not offend the alcohol industry.
“Growing skepticism of alcohol’s benefits”
Why not “Growing awareness of alcohol’s harms”?
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
200 points (97.6% liked)
News
31579 readers
3030 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Alcohol's benefits, you know like feeling like shit in the morning, liver failure, being an asshole...
Look if I can't blame the booze for being an asshole that means I'm just an asshole.
Eh, it helps me enjoy socializing, I'm nice AF when I drink, and I don't get hung over unless I go absolutely crazy with it. As for liver failure, the sooner this shit existence is over the better.
Have you heard the good news about our Lord and Savior, weed? All fun with no drawbacks
I've tried but it just doesn't do it for me.
I wish. I love weed, and it's waaaaaaay safer than alcohol, but it does have drawbacks. It gives me a lot of anxiety. I know some people who've had issues with Schizophrenia. And I know others who've had interference with their athsma.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I had to quit alcohol because of my husband's issue with it. It was no problem for me to let it go, though I did miss it for a time.
Same thing, I'm happy as hell when I've had a few glasses of wine, it's fun to socialize. But what really drove home to me the benefit of quitting, was even though I was happy and funny to be around, there were still moments where alcohol put me outside my own decision making.
I didn't like that.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
There possibly might be something healthy about certain wines that, with other dietary things might keep people healthier afaik, but they probably took that idea and just out it as a factual benefit, alcohol makes you healthy, period!
Don't mind the liver disease, cognitive decline, cancers and what not more. Hell, even hangovers are grrrrreat!
On a side note: pot hangovers are awesome.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Health concerns are legit, but have they seen the prices? A 6 pack of Bud Light is regularly 9 bucks. FOR BUD LIGHT. Forget about premium brands, those are 12 and up. Hell, small batch locals are up to 15+. Liquor hasn't shot up quite as much, but it has climbed.
Don't even get me started on how much bars/restaurants charge.
The bar around the corner from me charges $16 for a single White Claw.
Holy fuck
load more comments
(1 replies)
Weed is cheaper.
And is less likely to turn certain people into assholes the way that alcohol does sometimes
load more comments
(1 replies)
I'm gonna be honest. I need to do a lot more reading because I'm just more confused about alcohol consumption now.
I'd really like to better understand the direct health effects, like cancer mentioned in this article with low or moderate consumption.
"There is no safe level of alcohol consumption" isn't the most helpful piece of information. A lot of things we consume aren't completely safe. Whether it be carcinogens, red meat, or microplastics, we are always ingesting things that have both negative and positive effects.
Life is about managing risks. Eating fatty or high caloric foods, affects us a whole lot differently than eating whole foods, vegetables, and low carbs. Alcohol is just another item on the list of risks to manage.
How does low to moderate alcohol consumption compare to the risks associated with all the other sources of consumption?
🤔
"There is no safe level of alcohol consumption" isn't the most helpful piece of information.
It’s mostly to bust the myth that there’s some level of alcohol consumption that’s actually beneficial for the health. You should never pretend that alcohol is good for your health.
Yeah, I certainly agree with this is probably the most helpful thing from the article. I've never pretended that it can be healthy, but I know that's important to a lot of people.
load more comments
(8 replies)
For decades the line was that a glass or two of red wine had health benefits, but they were largely deriving that by comparing data to places like Italy, France, and Spain where wine consumption is normalized and they have other health factors.
Same stuff that started driving "The Mediterranean Diet".
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-disease/in-depth/red-wine/art-20048281
On further study though, it gets complicated:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10146095/
"Acute and short-term RW consumption seems to exert positive effects on antioxidant status, the lipid profile, thrombosis and inflammation markers, and the gut microbiota.
Importantly, a longer duration of treatment with RW has been shown to protect renal and cardiac function parameters in T2DM patients, suggesting that a moderate intake of RW may serve as a dietary supplement in diabetic patients.
On the other hand, blood pressure values, homocysteine levels, and gastrointestinal function seem to be impaired by short-term RW intake."
This is helpful.
Of course, it's focused on positive health benefits. I'm not actually looking to justify alcohol consumption as healthy. What I would honestly like to know is if it is proven to be unhealthy.
This article is the first time I've actually heard it associated with cancer risk. And that is with the presumption of frequent and excessive alcohol consumption.
I'm more concerned with low to moderate amounts and what the proven negative effects are. Is it worse than consuming red meat, carcinogen ingestion, microplastic congestion, and any number of other negative factors we ingest due to a bad diet (e.g. high cholesterol foods).
As far as I know, it's about on par. Light, infrequent drinking doesn't meaningfully increase your risk of disease any more than moderate consumption of red meat, for example. Frequent heavy drinking definitely does.
load more comments
(1 replies)
You should look up the correlation between alcohol consumption and cancer rates. It's pretty clear-cut; the graph goes down ever so slightly down* and then keeps on rising. The "safe" limit would just be a function of how high a probability of getting cancer you're willing to tolerate.
*Medical issues are a common reason not to drink, so the cancer rate for the total non-drinking population is appreciably higher than it would be for a healthy non-drinking individual. There's no causation behind that drop to our knowledge.
PS: I said "cancer," but the same principle applies to liver failure and a host of other "fun" diseases.
If I can find it, I'd be curious about this.
I'm more concerned with low to moderate amounts and what the proven negative effects are. AND, is it worse than consuming red meat, carcinogen ingestion, microplastic congestion, and any number of other negative factors we ingest due to a bad diet (e.g. high cholesterol foods).
I have been following this subject for decades as I have spent most of the last 30 years selling booze.
You should think of it as like smoking weed more than eating a steak.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
One of the many things I've cut down on because of unemployment. I used to socialize in bars more often.
I was drinking heavy but lack of funds meant lack of funs.
Something something recession indicator
load more comments
(2 replies)
I honestly can't help but thinking that the different media diet nowadays is also a driver of reduced alcohol consumption. If you watch traditional TV and movies, alcohol and drinking are absolutely everywhere and invariably normalized as part of everyday life. Kid has problem in school? Mom drinks a glass of wine. Getting promoted at work, everyone a round of scotch. Vacation doesn't count if there are no umbrella drinks.
You barely see any alcohol at all on TikTok, and I assume it's either forbidden or demonetized on all major platforms. Out of sight, I guess, out of mind.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Beers cost $15 per pint!
Damn, only $3.50 at my local bar. $5 or so for a nicer one. And if I’m feeling cheap, Applebees has $5 LITs.
Alcohol doesn't give me any fun benefits. Like, it doesn't remove my inihibitions and doesn't feel good. It just makes me feel nauseus and numb and it doesn't even taste good.
Weed is like that for me, I can't find the high at all, just feel stupid and tired and annoyed. It is so unpleasant. Tried a few times over the years and nope.
Earlier this year, the outgoing U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, recommended a label on bottles of beer, wine and liquor that would clearly outline the link between alcohol consumption and cancer.
"Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States — greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the U.S. — yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk," Murthy said in a statement in January.
The federal government's current dietary guidelines recommend Americans not drink or, if they do consume alcohol, men should limit themselves to two drinks a day or fewer while women should stick to one or fewer.
I recently saw a very good YouTube video on that topic and how the original studies often failed to account for variables.
Slight tangent, but it's weird how 2 drinks per day is a low limit. If you drink even 1 drink per day regularly that's probably an addiction imo
It is a lot easier to do good statistics now than ever before. It’s really important to make sure studies use good methodology.
I’m personally opposed to a lot of meta studies because older studies tend to bin ages and covariates and there is zero logic or evidence to that except it making things seem simpler on paper.
Modern regression spline techniques and knowing to use f tests correctly actually give us much much more reliable models that better use observed data.
As Frank Harrel calls it, dichotomania (arbitrarily binning real values) is a scourge on science.
I would like to know if, health wise, it’s the same to drink 2 drinks per day or four every second day (excluding the obvious short term effects)
4 every second day has much better effects on my mental health.
I’m a social drinker, so I’m more likely to drink “some” drinks once a week than a little every day. The latter is really not appealing!
Agreed. Also mathematically that's "a couple of beers:"
Thanks for the chuckle! Considering the health advise is specifically about two beers, saying a couple in context seemed confusing. Thus the quotation marks.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(10 replies)
Only a few decades behind the rise of skepticism in the health benefits of smoking. (Even with all those doctors recommending Camel and all.)
I'd point out that the same tactics the tobacco industry used are the same ones being used for fossil fuels. "Clean coal" and the like are just like filtered cigarettes. The lobbying and therefore conservative backing of existing industry groups is also the same. Climate "institutes" and private studies funded by fossil companies that magically agree with industry over every other scientist and reports. Conservative media doing industry propaganda (Rush Limbaughs grave is a gender neutral bathroom) until things get bad enough that everyone gets personal experience with the outcomes. Cancer, heart attacks, skin and teeth issues, etc. There was an increase in lung cancer rates until like the 2000s for men and a little later for women. Lung cancer rates have since drastically decreased as smoking rates continue to go down.
The problem with climate change is that same sort of lag to the worst effects. These heatwaves and wildfires we're experiencing are 30-50y from the worst of it and thats assuming we get our collective shit together tomorrow.
I’m 42 and I barely drink, even when I was in my crazy 20’s I would drink a little but I never got crazy with it. I believe personally it’s because I grew up with an alcoholic parent and most of my family were heavy drinkers and smokers. And seeing them destroy their lives was a reality check for me at a young age. Idk if that’s a factor with the younger generations now but just like politics I feel like the younger generation has learned what not to do. At least I hope so.
load more comments
(1 replies)
It's nice to see some good news once in a while.
men should limit themselves to two drinks a day or fewer while women should stick to one or fewer.
7-14 drinks a week feels higher than “moderate” to me. You can go out and get quite drunk before exceeding that average.
My having a few glasses of scotch or cocktails a month realistically I think are worth whatever accelerate all cause mortality awaits me.
I get that recommendations is zero as the optimal to minimize risk, but we really should ask about acceptable and meaningful risk, and the studies are that drinkers like me are not really much higher risk than baseline non drinker rates. Plus at that amount BMI, activity, diet are all more important factors for health.
I do think the habit makes the difference for these things. It’s good to avoid making these things a habit and keeping them in moderation.
Have a look at the tables on page 25 and 26 of this report: https://www.ccsa.ca/sites/default/files/2023-01/CCSA_Canadas_Guidance_on_Alcohol_and_Health_Final_Report_en.pdf
That table actually makes me feel much better about my drinking habits.
It’s very well presented in that way.
The table for females is super interesting, it’s a lot more extreme
I keep a bottle of grapefruit vodka in the house. It doesn't go bad (easily), it tastes like grapefruit with very little alcohol taste when added to anything vaguely sweet, and if I do want to experience a buzz, I just add more.
That being said, I drink rarely in private and simply would rather not buy it at some insane mark up from a bar. A single beer should not cost the same as an entire 6-pack of the same brand from any store that sells it.
Here is a link to the Gallup poll, which I couldn't seem to find in the article above: https://news.gallup.com/poll/693362/drinking-rate-new-low-alcohol-concerns-surge.aspx
Only drink on the weekends. 2-4 drinks spread across the second half of the day.
view more: next ›