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>Alcohol in the absence of polyunsaturated fats is fairly benign. This isn't true. Sorry to inform you but Ethanol is a IARC Group 1 Carcinogen. There is no sa

>Alcohol in the absence of polyunsaturated fats is fairly benign. This isn't true. Sorry to inform you but Ethanol is a IARC Group 1 Carcinogen. There is no safe amount of consumption of ethanol. When Ethanol enters the body, it is metabolized into Acetaldehyde, which enters the bloodstream, and later another enzyme metabolizes Acetaldehyde into harmless Aceitc Acid. Acetaldehyde also a Group 1 Carcinogen. Acetaldehyde is a tiny molecule and when in the bloodstream, Acetaldehyde can pass through any cell membrane unregulated, and when it enters the cell nucleus it causes irreparable DNA damage https://www.sciencealert.com/alcohol-damages-dna-stem-cells-cancer-acetaldehyde https://www.sciencealert.com/alcohol-damages-dna-stem-cells-... . When cells accumulate too much damage to their DNA, they either die or (very rarely) start replicating uncontrollably, leading to a situation known as cancer. I reccomend you read how Ethanol is processed by the body here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_metabolism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_metabolism . You can see that the process by which the human body metabolizes Ethanol always produces carcinogens, no matter the presence of fried foods, margarine, vegetable oils.

maoistinquisitr 9y ago
> There is no safe amount of ethanol. When Ethanol enters the body, it is metabolized into Acetaldehyde Just wait until you look up how beans are metabolized. All food except pure glucose has "problematic" metabolic pathways. Alcohol is not particularly interesting in this regard. It just magnifies the negative impacts of certain other choices. A healthy liver can deal with quite a lot of alcohol and acetaldehyde with not much issue. Sorry, you don't really know what you're talking about. You can dowse rats with booze and they handle it fine absent oils. It really is that simple.
- tristanj 9y ago
  >A healthy liver can deal with quite a lot of alcohol and acetaldehyde with not much issue. But in evolutionary terms, this is not true at all. Humans today are consuming way more alcohol than the metabolic pathway can handle. Alcoholic spirits are a recent invention, they were first created ~4000 years ago, which is far to little time for a metabolic pathway to adapt. If you read the wikipedia article, it says humans typically consume 3g of ethanol per day, as it is naturally produced in (fermented) food. Fruit, for example, is typically 0.6% ethanol by weight, higher if let ferment. The ability to metabolize ethanol is an important evolutionary adaption, as it allowed our ancestors to eat rotten/fermented food, especially advantageous when there was no other food to eat. However, when modern humans consume 2-3 drinks of alcohol, they are loading their body with 30-50 grams of ethanol, far more than the metabolic pathway can handle. This is a whole week's worth of ethanol, which is now being consumed in one hour. This leads to toxic amounts of ethanol and acetaldehyde accumulating in the bloodstream. Humans were never meant to consume this much alcohol. If you are wondering why humans started consuming alcoholic spirits in the first place, I am quite favorable towards the frugivory by-product hypothesis.
tejtm 9y ago
So glad to see this stated so clearly will take one exception which is to: ~Acetaldehyde causes irreparable DNA damage~ This is not 100% we all repair this damage all the time (usually) however not needing to repair excess damage is preferable. Note: ethanol is not the only source of aldehydes in our diet even if it is a potent one, paraphrasing a medical researcher friend "anything that tastes good will metabolize through an aldehyde phase" Our genetics, the dose and blind luck will determine if the damage is repairable. For an example of genetics and ethanol mediated DNA damage/repair see Asian Flushing syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction Yeast produced ethanol as a toxin to inhibit other things from eating what they were eating, it was only ~10M years ago something was hungry enough to eat the poison and lucky enough to have mutated to derive nutrition from the toxin. but hey, oxygen use to be a toxin too.
- klmr 9y ago
  > but hey, oxygen use to be a toxin too. It still is. Oxidative stress is a major threat to cells. There’s a lot of expensive machinery to keep the damage in check but it’s not foolproof.

maoistinquisitr 9y ago

> There is no safe amount of ethanol. When Ethanol enters the body, it is metabolized into Acetaldehyde Just wait until you look up how beans are metabolized. All food except pure glucose has "problematic" metabolic pathways. Alcohol is not particularly interesting in this regard. It just magnifies the negative impacts of certain other choices. A healthy liver can deal with quite a lot of alcohol and acetaldehyde with not much issue. Sorry, you don't really know what you're talking about. You can dowse rats with booze and they handle it fine absent oils. It really is that simple.

tristanj 9y ago
>A healthy liver can deal with quite a lot of alcohol and acetaldehyde with not much issue. But in evolutionary terms, this is not true at all. Humans today are consuming way more alcohol than the metabolic pathway can handle. Alcoholic spirits are a recent invention, they were first created ~4000 years ago, which is far to little time for a metabolic pathway to adapt. If you read the wikipedia article, it says humans typically consume 3g of ethanol per day, as it is naturally produced in (fermented) food. Fruit, for example, is typically 0.6% ethanol by weight, higher if let ferment. The ability to metabolize ethanol is an important evolutionary adaption, as it allowed our ancestors to eat rotten/fermented food, especially advantageous when there was no other food to eat. However, when modern humans consume 2-3 drinks of alcohol, they are loading their body with 30-50 grams of ethanol, far more than the metabolic pathway can handle. This is a whole week's worth of ethanol, which is now being consumed in one hour. This leads to toxic amounts of ethanol and acetaldehyde accumulating in the bloodstream. Humans were never meant to consume this much alcohol. If you are wondering why humans started consuming alcoholic spirits in the first place, I am quite favorable towards the frugivory by-product hypothesis.

tejtm 9y ago

So glad to see this stated so clearly will take one exception which is to: ~Acetaldehyde causes irreparable DNA damage~ This is not 100% we all repair this damage all the time (usually) however not needing to repair excess damage is preferable. Note: ethanol is not the only source of aldehydes in our diet even if it is a potent one, paraphrasing a medical researcher friend "anything that tastes good will metabolize through an aldehyde phase" Our genetics, the dose and blind luck will determine if the damage is repairable. For an example of genetics and ethanol mediated DNA damage/repair see Asian Flushing syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction Yeast produced ethanol as a toxin to inhibit other things from eating what they were eating, it was only ~10M years ago something was hungry enough to eat the poison and lucky enough to have mutated to derive nutrition from the toxin. but hey, oxygen use to be a toxin too.

klmr 9y ago
> but hey, oxygen use to be a toxin too. It still is. Oxidative stress is a major threat to cells. There’s a lot of expensive machinery to keep the damage in check but it’s not foolproof.