4 ms·

But moderate amounts of coffee and alcohol are good for you... or was that sarcasm?

• newnewpdro 8y ago
  There have been a number of articles relatively recently stating no amount of alcohol is safe to drink, it's a carcinogen.
  • coldtea 8y ago
    That could be both true and irrelevant when the other health related factors, plus the quality of life (social experience, etc) alcohol in moderation can enable is taken into account. Almost everything is a carcinogen. So we need to consider Amdahl's law and profile. He die from so many things that we do wrong (e.g. sedentary lifestyle, stress, lack of proper healthcare) that alcohol/coffee could be a very premature optimization. People in some of the so-called "blue zones", the places where people live most than everybody else statistically, drink a few glasses of wine a day.
  • rleigh 8y ago
    Yes, it's clearly bad news, but the world isn't quite so simple. The conclusions you draw depend upon the questions you ask. Suppose for a moment that what you say is completely true, and that there is a direct linear relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer incidence. Drinking more would clearly be detrimental. But would drinking moderately be an acceptable risk? It really depends upon whether alcohol has advantages which make it worth taking that risk. Given that it has its uses in social situations, and might help alleviate stress and help ones general wellbeing, it might well have advantages for promulgating the species and longevity. None of which is to say that being a carcinogen with a lot of other nasty effects is good, just that biology and human behaviour are very complex, and that there may be a host of subtle and not-so-subtle factors which also need to be taken into consideration.