Here’s why moderate drinking is probably not good for you | Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz
People who drink one to two standard drinks a day are the healthiest overall. But moderate drinking isn’t an isolated behaviour
As a society, we love drinking. There are people who abstain, but by and large we love to drink alcohol – it’s part of our social culture, part of our collective identity, and so pervasive that it can be hard to escape from even if you try. As anyone who’s attempted a Dry July can attest, booze is something that we are all connected to in myriads of ways.
So stories about drinking make us stop and take notice. In particular, moderate drinking. We all know that boozing too much is bad for us – it’s no surprise that 20 beers a week is probably not great for your health – but it is much more confusing that we are constantly being told that moderate drinking is either good or bad for us depending on the week or even the day that different studies are announced. A recent study just last month concluded that moderate drinking might be preventing depression, which seems incredibly unlikely for a number of reasons.