26 ms·

From first principles, it wouldn't make sense for alcohol itself to be beneficial. After all, the body treats it like poison, the liver filtering it from the b

by araneae 16y ago

From first principles, it wouldn't make sense for alcohol itself to be beneficial. After all, the body treats it like poison, the liver filtering it from the blood stream. Drink too much poison, and the liver gets tired and shuts down, and then you have liver failure. But there are some compounds in some kinds of alcoholic beverages, mostly red wine, that are thought to be beneficial. Of course, you could get the same benefits by skipping the fermentation process and just drinking grape juice.

electromagnetic 16y ago
Until very recently the only way to get truly safe drinking water was through one of two ways. #1 by boiling water and #2 by fermenting grains and fruits mixed with water to create alcohol. Like the old wives tale says, a glass of wine with dinner will stop you getting food poisoning. And research has been proving this for a while: http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/HealthIssues/1110384069.html http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/HealthIssues/1110384069.htm... (It's a far better read than the NYT article it takes from with more citations) Considering that 30% of the population annually considers themselves to have suffered food poisoning, that's quite the statistic and as most people confuse food poisoning symptoms with flu symptoms it could easily be far higher. Given that wine is of high enough proof to be potentially effective when consumed in any quantity with food that it has far ranging benefits far beyond just what's in it. If you ate something with a deadly E. Coli strain, you'd probably be kicking yourself in the ass if you drank grape juice over red wine. Not to mention the potential risk you face from food poisoning through tainted juice.
- araneae 16y ago
  A) This is entirely irrelevant to my point. The point was, the body takes in things it finds useful, and discards the ones it doesn't. Ethanol gets filtered out. And it's rough on your organs if it has to do it too often. Those are the first principles. B) The whole "wine as a replacement for water" thing is bullshit. Alcohol is a diuretic; when you drink wine, your net hydration is negative. C) Tainted juice is a non-issue if it's fresh; fruit is one of the safer things you can eat, especially vine fruits, since they don't contact the ground much. If it's spoiled juice... after a certain point it's alcoholic. Ethanol is the by-product of spoilage in grape juice. D) It's possible that alcohol in conjunction with food reduces contaminants in the food, but I find it highly unlikely this is the reason people started to and continue to drink; it seems that getting buzzed is the more plausible explanation.
tzs 16y ago
> But there are some compounds in some kinds of alcoholic beverages, mostly red wine, that are thought to be beneficial. Of course, you could get the same benefits by skipping the fermentation process and just drinking grape juice. That assumes that those compounds have the same effect when in grape juice. That's not a safe assumption--it would have to be actually tested. It sometimes turns out that other things consumed with a given compound affect things like how effectively it is taken in, or how efficiently it is used. That's one of the reasons, I believe, that nutritional supplements have sometimes been found to not be as effective as getting the same amount of a given nutrient "naturally". This is probably also why attempts to find "magic bullets" in foreign cuisines have generally failed. We might determine that in some country, they consume a lot of X, and even determine that X is responsible for some beneficial effect they have that we want. Then we start consuming X, and don't get the effect. X might only provide that effect when coupled with other things in that country's cuisine.
- araneae 16y ago
  I was actually thinking of specific compounds, one being resveratrol; it and other antioxidants are present in greater or equal amounts in fresh grapes and work as effectively in that form. It's true that some things need to work in conjunction; calcium absorption is rubbish without vitamin D, and vitamin D is fat soluble so it needs to be eaten with fat. But I've never heard of alcohol being necessary for any absorption process.

by araneae 16y ago

electromagnetic 16y ago

Until very recently the only way to get truly safe drinking water was through one of two ways. #1 by boiling water and #2 by fermenting grains and fruits mixed with water to create alcohol. Like the old wives tale says, a glass of wine with dinner will stop you getting food poisoning. And research has been proving this for a while: http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/HealthIssues/1110384069.html http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/HealthIssues/1110384069.htm... (It's a far better read than the NYT article it takes from with more citations) Considering that 30% of the population annually considers themselves to have suffered food poisoning, that's quite the statistic and as most people confuse food poisoning symptoms with flu symptoms it could easily be far higher. Given that wine is of high enough proof to be potentially effective when consumed in any quantity with food that it has far ranging benefits far beyond just what's in it. If you ate something with a deadly E. Coli strain, you'd probably be kicking yourself in the ass if you drank grape juice over red wine. Not to mention the potential risk you face from food poisoning through tainted juice.

araneae 16y ago
A) This is entirely irrelevant to my point. The point was, the body takes in things it finds useful, and discards the ones it doesn't. Ethanol gets filtered out. And it's rough on your organs if it has to do it too often. Those are the first principles. B) The whole "wine as a replacement for water" thing is bullshit. Alcohol is a diuretic; when you drink wine, your net hydration is negative. C) Tainted juice is a non-issue if it's fresh; fruit is one of the safer things you can eat, especially vine fruits, since they don't contact the ground much. If it's spoiled juice... after a certain point it's alcoholic. Ethanol is the by-product of spoilage in grape juice. D) It's possible that alcohol in conjunction with food reduces contaminants in the food, but I find it highly unlikely this is the reason people started to and continue to drink; it seems that getting buzzed is the more plausible explanation.

tzs 16y ago

> But there are some compounds in some kinds of alcoholic beverages, mostly red wine, that are thought to be beneficial. Of course, you could get the same benefits by skipping the fermentation process and just drinking grape juice. That assumes that those compounds have the same effect when in grape juice. That's not a safe assumption--it would have to be actually tested. It sometimes turns out that other things consumed with a given compound affect things like how effectively it is taken in, or how efficiently it is used. That's one of the reasons, I believe, that nutritional supplements have sometimes been found to not be as effective as getting the same amount of a given nutrient "naturally". This is probably also why attempts to find "magic bullets" in foreign cuisines have generally failed. We might determine that in some country, they consume a lot of X, and even determine that X is responsible for some beneficial effect they have that we want. Then we start consuming X, and don't get the effect. X might only provide that effect when coupled with other things in that country's cuisine.

araneae 16y ago
I was actually thinking of specific compounds, one being resveratrol; it and other antioxidants are present in greater or equal amounts in fresh grapes and work as effectively in that form. It's true that some things need to work in conjunction; calcium absorption is rubbish without vitamin D, and vitamin D is fat soluble so it needs to be eaten with fat. But I've never heard of alcohol being necessary for any absorption process.