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posted by chromas on Saturday August 25 2018, @04:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the this-news-is-terrible-and-I'm-gonna-need-a-drink dept.

No alcohol safe to drink, global study confirms

A large new global study published in the Lancet has confirmed previous research which has shown that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. The researchers admit moderate drinking may protect against heart disease but found that the risk of cancer and other diseases outweighs these protections. A study author said its findings were the most significant to date because of the range of factors considered.

The Global Burden of Disease [open, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31310-2] [DX] study looked at levels of alcohol use and its health effects in 195 countries, including the UK, between 1990 and 2016.

Analysing data from 15 to 95-year-olds, the researchers compared people who did not drink at all with those who had one alcoholic drink a day. They found that out of 100,000 non-drinkers, 914 would develop an alcohol-related health problem such as cancer or suffer an injury. But an extra four people would be affected if they drank one alcoholic drink a day. For people who had two alcoholic drinks a day, 63 more developed a condition within a year and for those who consumed five drinks every day, there was an increase of 338 people, who developed a health problem.

One of the study authors, Prof Sonia Saxena, a researcher at Imperial College London and a practising GP, said: "One drink a day does represent a small increased risk, but adjust that to the UK population as a whole and it represents a far bigger number, and most people are not drinking just one drink a day."

Related: The Truth We Won't Admit: Drinking is Healthy
Study Shows 3 Drinks a Day May Cause Liver Cancer
Even Moderate Drinking Linked to a Decline in Brain Health
American Society of Clinical Oncology: Alcohol Use Increases Risk of Cancer


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:00PM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:00PM (#726280)

    i think there's no way to make "alcohol" taste good.
    it's only "good" after you're drunk.

    i personally would like to taste some aged (black) tea from wood barrels.
    no amount of wood or smoke or what-not-taste is EVER going to make alcohol taste "good", sry.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:22PM (12 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:22PM (#726288) Homepage

    As a drunk, I agree 100%. There is nothing more offensive to me than alcohol snobbery, like going to a craft beer house and seeing some inane bullshit like, "This unfiltered IPA contains notes of chocolate, with nutty accents, and with a clean finish. It pairs well with red meat or swordfish."

    Of course it tastes like shit. So does coffee. But the nastier the taste, the better the buzz, and so it is the anticipation of the buzz and chuggability, rather than the taste in itself, that causes me to gravitate toward more expensive and bitter beers. My venerable workhorse Gallo Sauvignon Blanc is almost the cheapest wine you can buy, but it the most chuggable swill you can buy with the extra potency of wine and none of the rotgut of Vodka.

    I've always thought "wine pairings" with food were bullshit. If you're eating good food, don't ruin it with the wine nastiness -- especially because at more fancy and expensive places, cost you pay for the wine equals the cost you pay for the food itself. On the rare occasion I do drink with dinner, it's for the effect 100% and I'm going to be so pickled that the food is gonna taste good no matter what.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:21PM (3 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:21PM (#726315) Journal

      You have every right to speak for yourself, and from your own experience - as we all do. But, you don't have to be some kind of alcohol snob to appreciate the flavors of alcoholic beverages. I don't use the retarded nomenclature the snobs use (chocolate? in beer? WTF?) but I can describe the pleasant differences in various beverages. Rum? Sweet - sweet and mellow. The alcohol will sneak up and bite you in the ass, because you don't even taste the alcohol. Vodka generally has a bland but fiery bite. My preferred Scotch has a mellow smell and flavor like a meadow full of flowers. Pilsener beer is bland, often tasteless, and goes down like water. Ales have a definite flavor, and body - you can roll it around on your tongue and savor that flavor. Ditto with most lagers - though I've had a couple that would have passed for a pilsener pisswater.

      Not a snob, at all, neither am I an alkie. I can walk into a bar, intent on having a drink, have that drink, and leave. I drank it for the flavor, as much as any other reason. There is no need, or desire, to have twelve more drinks to keep that first one company.

      • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday August 25 2018, @08:24PM

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday August 25 2018, @08:24PM (#726338) Homepage

        Okay, maybe you were right about one particular case -- rum cake.

      • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday August 25 2018, @10:03PM (1 child)

        by MostCynical (2589) on Saturday August 25 2018, @10:03PM (#726369) Journal

        "I don't like x, so how could anyone?" - well, apparently, easily.
        "I can't taste flavour z, so no one can" - just wrong.
        "Beer tastes lie, shit, but I drink it anyway" - there are lots of different tasting alcoholic beverages.
        "All booze tastes like shit, but I drink it anyway" - maybe stop drinking alcoholic beverages.

        Also, chocolate in beer:
        https://www.thespruceeats.com/best-chocolate-beer-353056 [thespruceeats.com]

        --
        "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @11:32PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @11:32PM (#726394)

          Try Crème de cacao or Tia Maria with good chocolate ice cream. Yum.

          We recently inherited a small liquor cabinet, and not being drinkers we are trying various combinations...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:21PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:21PM (#726316)

      I always thought of you as a Ripple man.

      • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:32PM

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:32PM (#726320) Homepage

        Here's an amusing electronics joke - Russians drink ripple. Chebyshev is a Russian. The electronic filter [wikipedia.org] with his namesake is characterized by ripple in the pass(or stop) band.

        The more you know.

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:38PM (#726323)

      But the nastier the taste, the better the buzz

      I bet you are the guy that eats poop.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @08:38PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @08:38PM (#726343)

      My preferred cheap wines are Asti Tosti (10.99/bottle, tastes like 7 up), or anything by St. Julians (~$7/bottle, good enough to drink). Gallo, Carlo Rossi, whatever that other jug wine that black bitches drink is (paul masson?), are all drinkable, but just below my threshhold of worth spending money on.

      • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday August 25 2018, @08:54PM (2 children)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday August 25 2018, @08:54PM (#726348) Homepage

        Around these parts a 1.5 liter bottle of Gallo is 6.99 not including tax or CRV. Furthermore, around these parts we don't have Asti Tosti or St. Julians. Care to provide a rough geographic location so we can get a frame of reference?

        EDIT: Asti Tosti is a sparkling wine, and those are tasty, but not the wines of true alcoholics: Too much sweetness and headache. As for St. Julian, based on that info I'd say you are in the geographic middle of the U.S.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @09:42PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @09:42PM (#726363)

          You're correct about location. The great thing about tosti is it doesnt give me hangovers unless I'm also drinking liquor. My go-to for getting wasted is absinthe though - the liquor stores around here have little vials of it that are 69% alcohol and about the equivalent of a fifth of 80 proof for 8.99. Very easy to pocket discretely and pretty smooth straight or mixed.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @02:10AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @02:10AM (#726420)

          In the wise words of a wine aficionado (a wino), "that shit tastes like shit".

    • (Score: 2, Disagree) by takyon on Sunday August 26 2018, @12:06AM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday August 26 2018, @12:06AM (#726401) Journal

      IPAs, ales, stouts, etc. typically taste good to me, label snobbery or not, and there is a much greater variety of craft beers than wines. I couldn't care about the bitterness... I can drink coffee black just fine and enjoy it, maybe because of drinking IPAs, IDK. Wines pretty much taste the same to me. Is innovation happening on the wine side? Pink moscato, rosé, and mud-looking chocolate wine come to mind.

      Wine should be in the ballpark of $3/750ml before tax, $5-8 if you can't be arsed to find a deal. Compare a random $10-20/750ml (expensive) beer to the equivalent priced wine, and the beer should win out 95% of the time (the losses represent true snobbery, like recipes using a combo of ancient grains, habaneros, and rocky mountain oysters).

      My trucker friend once worked at a company that relabeled wine to mark it up. That's what people are paying for, a label. The $5 wine becomes a $25 wine, and nobody notices the difference. Try disguising a Budweiser as $craft_beer. Unlikely to work.

      Your Gallo seems like a fair choice, although a cold and refreshing Steel Reserve should beat it on alcohol units per dollar, and cans are more convenient.

      On that note, have you seen the canned wine? That could be a great way to make it cheaper and more convenient, better than boxed wine even, but I've only seen Underwood [totalwine.com] in stores which sells for $6/375ml.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]