Or to the leading cause of death of Canadians: dietary cholesterol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY0UY3FwoW4
The leading cause of death of Canadians can be eliminated strictly through diet and avoiding animal products that contain cholesterol. And yet we pour millions of dollars into research each year for cutting edge new drugs that give you (so claimed) a 20% reduction in heart attacks, while having dozens of unwanted side effects.
If you’re relying on the government and industry to teach you how to be healthy and to provide the tools you need to do it, you’re going to die young.
For most people the level of cholesterol in food has little effect on blood cholesterol.
Fat, on the other hand…
For most people the level of cholesterol in food has little effect on blood cholesterol.
I should have said dietary animal fats (including cholesterol) leading to serum cholesterol instead of dietary cholesterol and I didn’t catch the point you were making right away
“I don’t want to say that there are necessarily equivalent health risks,”
I mean, they said it themselves. Drinking responsibly and in moderation poses no recorded long-term health risks. But even 1 cigarette a day can cause serious harm.
The published “safe” levels of alcohol are generally completely arbitrary:
That study is a major failure in one key respect: Europeans drink far more than North Americans on average … and have longer lifespans than North Americans on average.
Perhaps there is something coughobesitycough that might be better to address first instead of going full metal Karen on people who enjoy a tipple at the pub at the end of a day?
And we Europeans would have an even longer lifespan if we didn’t drink literal poison.
I get it, it is fun. I partake in it every so often.
But don’t claim alcohol isn’t harmful. It is one of the most harmful drugs to your body and to society. Even worse than heroin. According to a UK study.
Don’t forget that 60% of aggression where the police needs to intervene has to do with alcohol.
Not quite. Even the accepted amount poses increased threats to being diagnosed with cancer (it is a carcinogen at the end of the day): https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohols-effects-body
It is incredibly worse with breast cancer too.
“Evidence is consistent that intake, even intake of less than 10-15 grams per day, is associated with increased risk of this disease”
https://arcr.niaaa.nih.gov/volume/40/2/alcohols-effects-breast-cancer-women
Not really equivalent. Smoking permanently leaves all kind of nasty shit in your lungs and causes cancer. Also very addictive, making moderation physically difficult (alcohol can also be addictive but not to the same extremes). Alcohol in moderation isn’t really an issue. Pushing it more can give your liver a bad time, but as long as you give it a break before the point of disease it can bounce right back.
There is a societal problem especially in the UK in that it’s seen as a sort of matter of pride to throw moderation out of the window and get as wasted as possible, but I have my doubts that graphic health warnings will do much about that. Either way it’s more an effect of society ignoring and sometimes even shaming moderation (how many times have you been shamed for going home before you fall over on a work’s night out) than the alcohol itself.
Smoking does not permanently leave anything in your lungs. The lungs constantly self clean and I believe after 10 years, all damage from any amount of smoking is removed.
The scarring from all the heavy coughing etc?
Still, rather not have all that sitting there for 10 years. The liver recovers from a few pints a lot quicker I believe, and even in the less favourable case of a fatty liver, a matter of weeks of abstienence rather than years. Disease of either, is probably a more dangerous situation.
less than 1.5 litres of wine or less than 3.5 litres of beer or less than 450 millilitres of spirits per week.
The WHO considers that light? Holy crap… so if you’re drinking 2 bottles of wine yourself per week you’re a “light drinker”
Hmmm
Still, as even they say, the less the safer. I’d say go after the low hanging fruit of binge drinkers (of which there are many).long before going after those of us who drink moderately.
I absolutely agree, and I didn’t mean to undermine your point in any way. I just wished to inform those that might not have been aware.
Drinking less = less dangerous
I also believe that “rewards” in moderation can be more healthy than avoiding everything that is unhealthy
Warnings now do appear on the back of alcohol in the EU but they’re usually small things on the back of the label stating the units of alcohol in the bottle & warning about drinking while pregnant or whatever.
Problem with these is they state some tiny amount equivalent to like half a glass of wine as the most you should have in a day, even though in the real world… basically anyone who drinks has a at least a little bit more than that and the moderate majority are fine and not on death’s door. I know 70 and 80 year olds in the pub who must drink 10+ units a day (I actually notice the oldies are the worst for wanting like 6%+ ABV beers) and are still there doing fine. So it has a bit of a “boy who cried wolf” effect to slap warnings on about drinking more than 14 units a week / 2 a day / whatever when at least in the UK like “everyone” drinks more than that. It just becomes a lauging stock, “look at that silly over-cautious nanny label”. If there should be any warning, IMO it’d be not to binge. If you can’t remember what happened the next morning, you drank too much, and it’s if you do that too often that it’s a major health risk.
Drinking more than these labelled amounts isn’t good for you, but health warnings should be more closely aligned to “really bad for you” to be taken seriously imo.
Well, because even those tiny amounts have a negative effect on your body. Instead of laughing about it, maybe you should consider, that you and everyone around you consumes too much alcohol? It’s exactly the 1 beer a day, that leads to addiction (and, possibly, cancer).
He’s talking about how the standard unit of alcohol definition bears no resemblance to anything people actually interact with in the real world. For example, one unit of alcohol is ~200mL of a typical beer. When was the last time you saw beer sold in 200mL containers?
He is saying that if you want to communicate such ideas to people you need to speak to them at their level, not something geared towards scientists. If you ask random people on the street how much beer one drink is, they will likely tell you it is one pint (473mL), when in reality that is more than two drinks.
And when one finds out that, they are not going to reel in horror, they are going to laugh at how out of touch someone was to communicate that idea so poorly.
