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Is moderate drinking actually healthy? Scientists say the idea is outdated.
(news.stanford.edu)
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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Alcohol is a carcinogen. No two ways about it. There aren't really "safe" levels for a toxin; it's not a matter of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, it'll gradually and insidiously weaken you by ways of fatty liver disease and worse.
There is, actually. Everything is toxic if you take enough of it. The only difference between what is called "toxic" and is not called "toxic" is that what is called "toxic" has a very low threshold before it is toxic to us.
Now I'm not here to defend alcohol, but that statement is simply wrong.
That is, in fact, not correct. Yes, there are things that have thresholds where they are harmless (e.g. salt), but alcohol isn't one of them. Alcohol, like many other toxic substances, does not have a threshold below, which it is harmless.
The WHO says the damage starts from the first drop: https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health
Everything has a threshold from a toxicology point of view.
Absolutely. Every. Single. Substance.
I haven't read the article you linked, but it does not matter, as a drop is not an indivisible unit of alcohol. It could already be above the threshold.
If your body accidentally absorbs a single molecule of ethanol, you'll be just fine.
Good to know that you, random keyboard scientist, know so much more about this topic than the WHO. So much in fact that you don't even have to check the source.
Let's form a religion around your wisdom. All hail iglou!
Alright, I read your article. All it says it that there is no study determining a threshold. That's your source?
Meanwhile, here is the ECHA page for ethanol, the alcohol most present in alcoholic beverages and the only one "safe" for consumption. You will there find various toxicity thresholds established by studies, although none on humans. But unless you are willing to argue that humans don't have thresholds for alcohol while mice, rats and monkeys do, that doesn't make a difference to the point.
No need to form a religion, it's just documented science.
Rather than hailing me, you could learn a bit about toxicology. Because the fact that everything has a threshold is pretty basic.
That was an absolute shit paper. Their methodolgy was horrible and their statistics were even worse. It's seriously so flawed that I gave myself an migraine from eyerolling so hard.
Sunlight is also a carcinogen, but that doesn't mean you always stay indoors.
No, of course not. You should apply sunscreen when outdoors
There's no "safe" level of sunlight, even if you wear sunscreen.
10 minutes of sun per day is typically less likely to give you cancer than 0 minutes. Vitamin D (and other compounds involved in the synthesis from cholesterol that you won't get in supplements) upregulate DNA repair polymerases that protect against carcinogens. Of course after a few minutes the costs of UV exposure outweight this benefit though.
Yeah but you don't have to drink alcohol to live.
Going outside is unavoidable and using sunscreen, long clothing and a hat, protects you from a lot of the radiation damage.
Most outdoor activities are avoidable. Avoiding those activities entirely is safer than wearing protection.
Indoor humans represent!
If outside was completely avoidable, I absolutely would.
To each their own.
Personally, I don't mind sitting outside in the sun. It's a good place to have a beer.
That is a highly myopic, frankly stupid, opinion that isn't even yours - you're just repeating things that you heard.
The deleterious health effects from not getting sun exposure vastly outweigh the potential DNA damage from sun exposure.
I take plenty of vitamin D every day
Can you quote the section of my comment that has gotten you so upset please?
I want to know exactly which bit of what I wrote instigated this response, so I know how to reply properly.
What deleterious health effects from not getting sun exposure?
Vitamin D deficiency. Rickets. Osteopathic problems. Seasonal Affective Disorder. Weight gain. Etc.
https://distance.physiology.med.ufl.edu/what-are-the-effects-of-not-getting-enough-sunlight/
They make vitamin D pills
You can get the RDA of vitamin D from a healthy diet, without need for sunlight.
Weight gain is caused by diet and lack of exercise, not lack of sunlight.
SAD can be treated with non-carcinogenic lamps.
And exactly no one (in the article or this thread) said you should never drink alcohol.
It's just that for a very long time we were told that some alcohol was healthy, when in fact it is causing cancer (among other things). That sounds like some releveant info to me when I make the decision to drink alcohol or not.
Here's my favorite paper on the subject about the benefits/cost of alcohol usage by cardiologists from 2007.
https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2007.04.089
Alcohol and Cardiovascular Health: The Razor-Sharp Double-Edged Sword
Despite what the linked article claims, it's still not clear whether alcohol's known cancer risk is outweighed by any health benefits (for example, reducing the risk of stroke/CVD). At least one recent paper concluded that light or moderate alcohol use does reduce overall mortality.
E: Good thing I didn’t put any money into this, as it seems I was wrong about this study.
I am willing to bet that this study is one of the many that interpret the so called J-curve as meaning “moderate use is healthy”. These studies fail to take in consideration that some/many of those who don’t use alcohol at all or use very little, have some kind of medical condition that prevents them from consuming alcohol, but also increases their risk of death. This group of people skews the data to look like a J-curve. Handle this group correctly in the data and you get a straight line.
This was a prospective study that looked at lifelong abstainers, not people who gave up drinking. Furthermore, reduced overall mortality was found in light/moderate drinkers even after excluding participants with pre-existing conditions.
That's the correct way to control for the issue you raised.
From a statistical design perspective, that was a really well done analysis.