An article by Stanton Peele makes the case that there is strong evidence that reasonable levels of drinking are healthy, and if fact beneficial to your health compared with abstinence.
For all levels of drinking, including the highest one, for both men and women, death rates did not reach those for abstainers.
[...] Of course, abstainers may not drink because they are already ill. Thus the meta-analysis relied on studies that eliminated subjects who are abstaining due to illness, or else contrast drinkers with lifetime abstainers.
There isn't a list of references in the article, but this study may be one of the supporting ones: Alcohol Dosing and Total Mortality in Men and Women: An Updated Meta-analysis of 34 Prospective Studies.
There are, no doubt, reasonable criticisms that can be made, but there does seem to be a case for saying that drinking some alcohol is beneficial.
Article also published in: Pacific Standard Magazine
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday August 29 2014, @02:47PM
If you read health magazines, the number of different ways that food can be unhealthy for you seems to be functionally infinite. So in practice, anything I actually enjoy the flavor of has something supposedly harmful to me in it. I guess if you really like eating plain carrots and celery and drinking water, good on you.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"