"... classify themselves as 'moderate drinkers' (roughly 1-2 units a day) seem to have a lower risk for some diseases – but that is very difficult to study in isolation. Generally, moderate drinkers tend to be wealthier, more educated, live in nicer areas and benefit from other factors that heavy drinkers and non-drinkers don’t, which is probably why a New Zealand study that controlled for socio-economic factors saw the 'benefits' of moderate drinking disappear almost entirely.... Recent research suggests that regular, small-scale drinking is far from ideal: one study of 36,000 adults found that even one or two drinks a day might decrease the chance of healthy ageing and reduce the size of your brain...."
From "'Eight hours' sleep! And you must eat breakfast!’ The truth behind 10 of the biggest health beliefs" (The Guardian).
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49 comments:
Wait a Minute! You're saying people who are:wealthier, more educated, live in nicer areas..
Have Advantages? Is THAT what you're saying? I'm Not Sure you Could BE more
classist
ablist
areaist
This is An OUTRAGE!! It's Not Fair that the Advantaged have advantages!! This HAS TO STOP!
I could go through each of the 10 health beliefs here and how they apply to me, but who cares what I think about this?
Our friends at The Guardian implore us "If you are able, please do consider supporting us. Only with your help can we continue to get on Elon Musk’s nerves."
Now that's fact-based journalism you can trust.
I always go to The Guardian for my health information. Needless to say, this will not alter my enjoyment of the naturally grown and produced products from Napa or Sonoma.
My New Year's resolution is to drink more. Not to excess, but more frequently. A little bit of bourbon makes for a pleasant evening.
Well the article is more interesting than another piece by Robert Reich or Michael Tomasky--who regularly spew nonsense at the Grauniad.
“Controlled for social-economic factors”: When we biased the results we got the results we wanted.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day....for cereal manufacturers, who made it up.
I say we should increase the laughter in 2023. I will continue taking my daily walks around the lakes and watching my diet, but more laughter each day will help keep the Grim Reaper away.
That’s my plan and I’m sticking to it.
I only got seven hours last night. I’m doomed!
That was a surprisingly good article (I mean that I agree with most of it, of course). The "moderate" drinking is good for you business has always been a bit dubious in my opinion. It's the sort of thing many of us would like to believe. I was shocked to read sensible advice about weightlifting and red meat, but the bit about moderate 10k steps was a bit understated. If you can manage a more vigorous pace and longer on your feet, I would put the point of diminishing returns a good bit higher than that.
That is all surface level stuff. What you would suspect I guess.
Red meat is the most nutritionally dense food you can eat aside from eggs. Know where the cow you are eating lived and know what it ate. There is going to be a local butcher and local cow farm near you. Buy a freezer and buy half a cow or a full cow and you are set for a while at ~$5 a pound for grass fed hamburger and steak.
Whole eggs with the yolk are the most nutrient dense and the highest protein availability food by a long ways.
I am surprised she didn't touch on cholesterol in this article, but it may be too early on that one. Statins are in for a bad decade as the research and health effects can't be hidden much longer.
Skipping breakfast and meals in general is going to become more common as people learn about how mitochondria work inside your body. They do a lot more than just produce ATP. They help regulate body temperature, metabolism, and fat storage. Eventually you will look up mitochondrial decoupling. You want your mitochondria to have a chance to "rest" and to produce heat and do all of the different jobs they are supposed to do. That means fasting and temperature manipulation and constant daily exercise. It isn't how much you exercise, it is reducing the length of periods you spend at rest metabolic rate.
You should be burning fat as a primary energy source. People who stuff carbs in their body for 16 hours a day develop white fat cells over time which are gross and sedentary. They are "white" because they are just pure lipids and your body has no way to access them. "Brown" fat is named thus because it has mitochondria in it and the higher your mitochondrial density the faster you can burn stored fat for energy. You should be in ketosis for 99% of your life.
The jury is still out on vegetables. You get almost nothing out of vegetables you eat. The bio availability of the vitamins and minerals and the energy in humans is negligible. When you eat vegetable protein you can absorb ~18% of the protein because the amino acids are just not balanced for humans. Compare with ~33% with red meat and ~48% with a whole egg.
But there is evidence that specific vegetables can feed gut bacteria that produce gases that are used by your mitochondria. Look for vegetables that are high in inulin specifically.(Asparagus,artichokes,brussel sprouts) There are other vegetables that have similar affects.
But remember you are feeding other organisms not yourself. You get your nutrients from meat and eggs.
At some point in the next decade people are going to just stop eating Wheat, Beans, Corn and Grains in general. They are just bad for humans. Wheat tastes good but it is bad for us.
The key is one really large tumbler of wine you finish at least two and a half hours before bedtime.
Human studies are ferociously difficult to control. Cultural and political factors inevitably take part, - in witness of which every jot and tittle of covid studies. The early population studies that introduced the "French paradox" were necessarily very coarse-grained. And there was an interesting, rather puritanical, response that, well we know demon alcohol can't do you any good, so let's find out what got left out of the population studies. So the data got refined, to take away reformed alcoholics and, as here, cultural biases. I notice however that all the data depends on self reporting. And is there not a likely bias in that data for people under-reporting their consumption?
In a way I prefer the coarse-grained population studies. If some large successful culture has a diet that evidently does not entail short miserable lives, why not go for it? Or at least stop worrying about it?
The articles that ignore the natural variability in the human species are ridiculous. Note how the author phrases things:
For long-term health, two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables per day has been associated with the greatest benefit
I suspect this is more about wealth than anything else.
The only news should be: Figure out what your body needs, and act appropriately. Consult a doctor is needed.
I always suspected that was what was happening about the moderate drinking. But I enjoy it anyway.
IRC, this whole 1-2 drinks is based on studies of liver disease, which shows that the cummulaive bad effect of drink goes way up once you start to average 3 drinks a day. IOW, its a numerical calculation total number of drinks taken x number days = cum total number of drinks= impact on liver.
Drinking every day doesn't give your body a chance to recover. Its better to space it out. In any case, even 1 drink is "Bad" for you. Its just a matter of degree.
Of course, we all know that no level of MJ smoking is bad for you. At least that's what big MJ wants you to believe. No "Studies" have been made, so its OK. Buy and smoke as much as you can!
I've talked to a Doctor who specialized in Liver disease and he was quite upset about the propganda behind 2 drinks a day is "safe". First, if you can tell people they can have 2 drinks, they'll pour themselves 8 ounces of wine into a big glass and consider that 1 drink. Or toss down 2 ounces vodka. 2 drinks = 10 ounces of wine.
Secondly, they'll start drinking 3 drinks a days. Because what's the harm if they go a little over?
Thirdly, worst of all, they'll never give their liver a chance to recover. The Doctor was currently treating someone who "averaged" 3 drinks a day. 1 during lunch and 2 at dinner.
I will continue to Follow The Science.
The Science never changes.
Wheat tastes good but it is bad for us.
And yet, wheat and other grains gave us civilization.
I think I'm going to skip reading the article, and I'll just say that I read somewhere that the key to good health is a full English breakfast every day.
"The key is one really large tumbler of wine you finish at least two and a half hours before bedtime."
So... you're saying 3 glasses of wine... or more?
" one or two drinks a day might decrease the chance of healthy ageing and reduce the size of your brain....""
Explains so, so much.
About our usual suspects.
'...found that even one or two drinks a day might decrease the chance of healthy ageing and reduce the size of your brain...."'
Good thing my brain is so fucking huge...
But seriously, how does this tie into culture?
In many cultures, drinking wine is an integral part of life.
ymmv
Sorry, we Italians will never give up our pizza and pasta! which I have at least twice a week, usually with a small glass of red. So at most I have 1-2 drinks every other day. My body is getting to recover from both the alcohol and carbs!
One anecdotal experience is all I have to rely on. I've found that what the science recommends has been universally bad for my body. What the science scorns has been good.
Our society as a whole embraces an anorexic mindset, trying to control life by altering diet and quantifying exercise.
What's not obviously ruled out here is that moderate drinking causes both wealth and health.
If that were true, it wouldn't be surprising that if you control for wealth, the health benefit also fades.
Thirdly, worst of all, they'll never give their liver a chance to recover. The Doctor was currently treating someone who "averaged" 3 drinks a day. 1 during lunch and 2 at dinner.
Sounds like nonsense to me. Maybe he was treating someone with Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Lurker21 said...
Wheat tastes good but it is bad for us.
And yet, wheat and other grains gave us civilization.
True.
But with the advent of domesticated agriculture Human brains shrunk, humans got shorter, our brain size to gut ratio decreased, and our bone density went down.
I think with another few hundred thousand years of evolution we could develop gastrointestinal systems that would be in harmony with increased wheat/corn/grain consumption. We would also need to develop a Blood Brain Barrier that could filter grains so the grains did not damage out brains.
But my personal time window is not that long and I am not sacrificing my kids to the millennia long effort to evolve grain tolerant GI tracts in humans.
Recent research suggests... might decrease
Scientific rent seeking in cargo cults published with journolistic liberal art, empathetic appeal, sometimes release.
The Guardian
The paper of record for climate cooling... warming... change hypothesis without attributable, reliable, sustainable observation(s).
"Wheat tastes good but it is bad for us."
Which is exactly why we will keep eating it. Taste > all other considerations over any non-immediate time frame.
Joe Smith said...
"'...found that even one or two drinks a day might decrease the chance of healthy ageing and reduce the size of your brain...."'
Good thing my brain is so fucking huge..."
I know, right.
The real problem with the idea of alcohol being good for you is that it just doesn't make any sense.
Your liver tries to filter alcohol out of your blood stream.
Alcohol only "works" when your liver gets overloaded and alcohol gets to your brain.
Once alcohol gets to your brain it short circuits parts of your brain that cause "inhibition."
None of this can be really be reconciled with "healthy."
Culturally and socially alcohol has some much better arguments going for it.
Health wise no.
"So... you're saying 3 glasses of wine... or more?"
Specifically, my facetious remark was prompted by a recent gift, a set of large bowl- or brandy snifter-shaped "cabernet" tumblers that hold nearly half a bottle, or two and a half-ish "normal" sized wine glasses, although they are designed only to be filled about halfway in order to let the red wine breathe.
I am not actually endorsing over-consumption.
Guardian donation pitch at end of article:
"The year is 2033. Elon Musk is no longer one of the richest people in the world, having haemorrhaged away his fortune trying to make Twitter profitable. Which, alas, hasn’t worked out too well: only 420 people are left on the platform. Everyone else was banned for not laughing at Musk’s increasingly desperate jokes.
In other news, Pete Davidson is now dating Martha Stewart. Donald Trump is still threatening to run for president. And British tabloids are still churning out 100 articles a day about whether Meghan Markle eating lunch is an outrageous snub to the royal family.
Obviously I have no idea what the world is going to look like in a decade. But here’s one prediction I feel very confident making: without a free and fearless press the future will be bleak. Without independent journalism, democracy is doomed. Without journalists who hold power to account, the future will be entirely shaped by the whims and wants of the 1%.
A lot of the 1% are not big fans of the Guardian, by the way. Donald Trump once praised a Montana congressman who body-slammed a Guardian reporter. Musk, meanwhile, has described the Guardian, as “the most insufferable newspaper on planet Earth.” I’m not sure there is any greater compliment.
I am proud to write for the Guardian. But ethics can be expensive. Not having a paywall means that the Guardian has to regularly ask our readers to chip in. If you are able, please do consider supporting us. Only with your help can we continue to get on Elon Musk’s nerves.
Arwa Madawi
Columnist, Guardian US"
For long-term health, two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables per day has been associated with the greatest benefit
Fruit, no. You may as well consume fermented fruit to get your daily carbohydrates, diabetic progress, fat evolution.
Vegetables in moderation because humans are not ruminants... and methane is a Greenhouse gas.
Fats and proteins with moderate exercise to reduce body fat and optimize energy.
Take two incredible edible eggs for breakfast and enjoy the rest of the day.
How Alcohol Affects Your Body
Everything in Moderation
Alcohol can affect your body in different ways, depending on how much you drink. In general, experts say it’s OK to have up to one drink a day if you’re a woman or two if you’re a man.
...
Heavy drinking means eight or more drinks a week for women and 15 or more for men.
I am proud to write for the Guardian. But ethics can be expensive. Not having a paywall means that the Guardian has to regularly ask our readers to chip in. If you are able, please do consider supporting us. Only with your help can we continue to get on Elon Musk’s nerves.
Arwa Madawi
Columnist, Guardian US
It's because he's African-American, a Person of Color, a peach American, right?
Ethics is a relativistic religion. #HateLovesAbortion
Credit where it is due. That message from the Grauniad was pretty funny. Many years ago (1999) I installed a huge plasma screen in the Guardian’s lobby in London. Within hours some wag in IT had pushed a porn video to it. It looked like a fun place to work.
Alcohol can affect your body in different ways, depending on how much you drink. In general, experts say it’s OK to have up to one drink a day if you’re a woman or two if you’re a man.
...
Heavy drinking means eight or more drinks a week for women and 15 or more for men.
Interesting how "OK" and "heavy drinking" vary by one drink per week.
Makes you think that they're putting up these numbers using the same philosophy that yields 45MPH recommendations on curves which can safely be taken at 75. Unless it's snowing.
Almost all studies of human nutrition are garbage. It’s impossible to do a properly controlled experiment because you can’t expect large cohorts of people to live their lives in a predefined way for many years. That leaves you with garbage observational studies where the input data is probably wrong and where at best you get a correlation. But correlation is not causation.
Blogger Achilles said..."Red meat is the most nutritionally dense food you can eat aside from eggs."
I don't understand why nutrition density is a desirable property.
I'm not arguing against the nutritional value of red meat and eggs, but rather asking why I should care about nutritional density. It's not like my stomach fills up before I reach my daily nutritional needs.
Makes you think that they're putting up these numbers using the same philosophy that yields 45MPH recommendations on curves which can safely be taken at 75. Unless it's snowing.
... sports suspension, responsive tires, low center of mass, unwavering kinetic energy.
As for humans, diversity is individual (not color as diversity [dogma]) and stems from genetics, physiology, circumstance.
"Sounds like nonsense to me. Maybe he was treating someone with Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease."
Could be Doctor K. Maybe he was just trying to make sure I kept the alcohol consumption down, or could be I misheard it.
Original Mike said...
Blogger Achilles said..."Red meat is the most nutritionally dense food you can eat aside from eggs."
I don't understand why nutrition density is a desirable property.
I'm not arguing against the nutritional value of red meat and eggs, but rather asking why I should care about nutritional density. It's not like my stomach fills up before I reach my daily nutritional needs.
That's totally cool.
But plants in general don't like to be eaten.
Animals don't get eaten by running away. Plants don't get eaten by poisoning you. Phytates, Oxylates, Lectins and other anti-nutrients do actual damage to you.
We are not ruminants. We just don't have the guts to digest and absorb nutrients from plants. We traded our ability to eat those things for larger brains.
I personally don't want to participate in the process of going back to being a plant eater. Plant eaters have big guts and small brains.
That's just not my thing.
"Plants don't get eaten by poisoning you. Phytates, Oxylates, Lectins and other anti-nutrients do actual damage to you."
Well, that's a different argument.
Thank's for your answer. At 67 y.o., I'm still trying to figure out nutrition. Or, more accurately, I'm finally trying to figure it out. I didn't pay enough attention I was younger.
Yinzer said...
Sorry, we Italians will never give up our pizza and pasta! which I have at least twice a week, usually with a small glass of red. So at most I have 1-2 drinks every other day. My body is getting to recover from both the alcohol and carbs!
I make pizza, manicotti, and lasagna every now and then. The noodles are a mixture of whole eggs, beef gelatin, salt and pork rind panko. The ratios vary based on how thick or fluffy I want the crust or the noodles to be. I make my own pizza and tomato sauces and use erythritol instead of sugar. Butter powder and Cheese powder for fun.
The kids can't tell the difference.
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