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Is a Glass of Wine Harmless? Wrong Question

16 points by gnicholas 3y ago

version_five 3y ago
A rare lucid moment for The Atlantic. It feels like there's a group that wants humanity to be living matrix style in pods for fear of disease and carbon emissions, doing only the basic necessities to stay alive as long as possible, regardless of how horrible a life that creates. This is exactly why technocracy doesn't work, technocrats only know how to optimize within the confines of their narrow speciality. Health officials should have no say over how people choose to live.
- smt88 3y ago
  This seems tangential to the article, but I'll engage with it anyway. > It feels like there's a group that wants humanity to be living matrix style in pods for fear of disease and carbon emissions This group is so small, it essentially doesn't exist. Nearly 100% of people are not extremists on either of these issues. > regardless of how horrible a life that creates Reasonable precautions from disease and reducing carbon emissions don't create a horrible life. The pandemic was a less-than-once-in-a-generation exception, not a common occurrence. > Health officials should have no say over how people choose to live As long as people want fellow citizens to give them a safety net for their mistakes, their fellow citizens should get to impose harm-reduction measures on them. For example, if someone on a motorcycle chooses not to wear a helmet and not to have health insurance, they could incur millions of dollars of costs that their other people have to pay for. It's reasonable, then, to force people to wear motorcycle helmets. I'm all for letting people choose how to live, as long as they give up the privileges that come with it. For health, that would mean: - no Medicare/Medicaid - no emergency medical care until it's determined that they can pay for it - no publicly-funded investigation of their death if/when they die - no usage of public wheelchair ramps or other accommodations for people with disabilities I'm missing things, but you get the point. If people want to opt out of public health and safety, they should have to opt all the way out. "Libertarians" want to have the freedom to shoot themselves in the foot and have other people subsidize the surgery.
  - zer8k 3y ago
    > For example, if someone on a motorcycle chooses not to wear a helmet and not to have health insurance, they could incur millions of dollars of costs that their other people have to pay for. It's reasonable, then, to force people to wear motorcycle helmets. As a long time rider and have lost friends and other riders I can tell you one thing: not wearing a helmet is the easiest way to save everyone money. You're guaranteed to die in all but the least serious of accidents (dropping your bike at a stop), clean up fees are cheap, funerals can be made cheap, the only variable is the cost of therapy for the person who has to mop you up. Of all the people I know who've survived accidents their gear was the reason they were able to pay for a doctor's kid's schooling (and probably a bonus ferrari).You'd think we'd encourage no-helmet laws! I know you're making a larger point here and I am being sarcastic. I just think it's funny you chose this example when it's likely the cheapest way a motorcyclist can die.
    - version_five 3y ago
      I know there are similar findings about e.g. smoking - you die younger and more quickly and so spare socialized healthcare lots of spending. Probably true for obesity, drinking, drug use, etc. From a purely economic standpoint, living to be 100 with various chronic conditions of the kind that come with age (plus drawing social security) is probably the most draining way to live. I don't mean to say it's bad, just that it shows how dumb the thinly veiled telling people how to live in the name of their burden on the healthcare system argument is. If that was really what we cared about the government should be encouraging us all to live fast and die young. But it's about control, not anything else.
      - smt88 3y ago
        This comment is just so ignorant of actual public health that it doesn't feel worthwhile to respond to. When people die young, they don't pay back the enormous amounts of money that was spent on raising and educating them. Smoking is an absolutely perfect example of something that costs society absolutely staggering amounts of money. Do you know how much it costs to treat someone who gets cancer from smoking? Or to treat someone with diabetes who was obese? Or to send someone to rehab for drug use? Any one of these things can easily cost society (government, insurance company, family, the individual themselves) millions of dollars. And the majority of the cost is almost never borne by the individual. If you give yourself cancer and have health insurance, all the other people with health insurance pay for your treatment. > just that it shows how dumb the thinly veiled telling people how to live in the name of their burden on the healthcare system argument is Instead of saying it's dumb, how about you actually explain it or provide examples? There is nothing anywhere that will tell you that letting people smoke would save society money. That's so unbelievably backwards that I can't believe I even read it.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  > Health officials should have no say over how people choose to live. I'd agree that health officials shouldn't be able to dictate how people live their lives, except when externalities are present (and even then, it's a balancing act). But I think it's great when researchers figure out what the impact is of various common behaviors, so people can decide whether they wish to do those things. This article is just another iteration on that discussion. I welcome Dr. Oster's perspective on this subject because she is generally good at keeping her biases from poisoning her research, she has no conflicts of interest regarding this research, and she is thorough in her analyses. However, I am mindful that she is an economist, not a medical doctor, and I would tend to put more stock in an unbiased MD than econ PhD (even though I majored in econ and generally think the field is useful).
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > I'd agree that health officials shouldn't be able to dictate how people live their lives, except when externalities are present Everything can, and often is, argued to be an externality.
    - comte7092 3y ago
      That’s just another way of saying that we live in a society, not in a social vacuum. Your actions have impacts on other that need to be taken into consideration and there’s a give and take that comes with that. It’s totally reasonable to object to rule by the “experts”, but Americas libertarian streak verges on childish more often than not.
      - lelanthran 3y ago
        > That’s just another way of saying that we live in a society, not in a social vacuum. Well, that was my point. It's pointless to say people should be allowed to do what they like unless there are externalities, and then, classify everything as an externality. It's just a more wordy way of saying that people shouldn't be allowed to do what they want.
- rendaw 3y ago
  I don't drink, and I avoid red and preserved meat. It's not that bad.
et-al 3y ago
Obligatory: https://archive.is/qGVNl https://archive.is/qGVNl "No alcohol" is just the new trend in a long line of dietary extremism (remember the bacon-laden paleo years?) and Oster's is a voice trying to swing the pendulum back. Maybe this is a modern phenomena, but it seems moderation isn't cool and one needs to label themselves and adhere to a singular category or identity nowadays.
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  is the alternative (drinking enough to get buzzed every day) healthy?
  - reducesuffering 3y ago
    If there was a limit to healthy alcohol, it would be ~3 drinks / week (on all the J curves I’ve seen, & 12oz beer / 5oz red wine, not 1.5oz liquor) Although I’m still unconvinced where in 0 - 3 is optimal
  - et-al 3y ago
    I don't think that's Emily Oster's proposal, either: > But many people do enjoy a drink from time to time: a beer with friends, a cold glass of rosé in the summer, a hot toddy in front of the fire, even just a glass of white wine while cooking at the end of a long day. If we accept that pleasure has value, and that the data are muddy, then the moderation standard makes more sense.
  - nicbou 3y ago
    The alternative is enjoying a drink once in a while, ot functional alcoholism.
    - vintermann 3y ago
      We know that if you recommend that, it will change the baseline for what's considered normal/responsible, leading to increase in alcoholism or alcohol-related harm more generally. I agree with the headline "Is a glass of wine harmless? Wrong question". But I think it's wrong for a very different reason. I think it's wrong because it is hyper-individualized (is it harmless for me right now?) question about a collective, social problem. It's a choice we don't actually make as individuals nearly as much as we'd like to believe.
deafpolygon 3y ago
Alcohol is poison no matter which side you come down on in this discussion. Very occasional use is OK (for you, but not for me) and not likely to cause you harm. Just like getting high once a year is probably not going to kill you or cause you any type of irreparable damage. But I'd be hard pressed to be convinced that drinking in any form, at any given frequency- is going to be good or beneficial for the majority of people anyways. If what's in wine is so healthy for you, why isn't it in pill form? Why haven't we found how to extract those sought-after polyphenols, flavonoids, et. al. sans alcohol and served that up yet? Oh, right- we need to support the alcohol industry. I'm a teetotaler, and former recovering alcoholic from a family with a history of alcoholism. So there's probably my bias. I also don't believe we should be consuming as much coffee, or rather caffeine, as we are as that is probably a leading contributor to increasing anxiety and depression. I realize I am unlikely to be very unpopular here. But I don't care. The alcohol and caffeine industries are propped up by those who are addicted - 80% are funded by the 20%; people who handwave this away are forgetting the harm it's causing some and ignoring the damage these individuals go through because they are so normalized in our lives these day. And yes, you can add chocolate to that list (having some caffeine to a small extent). There are huge lobbying and advertising mechanisms in place to ensure it keeps going. I.e., Coca Cola depends on caffeine being present in their drinks. Just take a gander at the top 5 food&beverage companies in the world. Top Food & Beverage Co. in the world (2022) #1 - Nestle (caffeinated drinks, chocolates, addicting food) #2 - PepsiCo (caffeinated drinks) #3 - Anheuser-Busch (alcoholic drinks) #4 - Coca-Cola (caffeinated drinks) #5 - Mondelez international (chocolates, caffeinated drinks)
- gnicholas 3y ago
  > But I'd be hard pressed to be convinced that drinking in any form, at any given frequency- is going to be good or beneficial for the majority of people anyways. The point of the article was that it's unwise to only consider health consequences of alcohol, particularly when they are so uncertain/ever-changing. Instead, it makes sense to factor in enjoyment (personal utility), which for many people weighs in favor of drinking sometimes. As for your point about pills, I think there are pills that contain distillates from certain types of wine, which supposedly are good for you.
helpfulmandrill 3y ago
I find I enjoy drinking a lot more when I hardly ever do it. If I have a glass of wine a few nights a week, its meh. If I hardly ever drink, the very occasional glass of wine or two is absolute heaven. I'm unlikely to go teetotal, but for me it isn't worth risking my health by overusing something that becomes less pleasurable the more I use it.

16 points by gnicholas 3y ago

A rare lucid moment for The Atlantic. It feels like there's a group that wants humanity to be living matrix style in pods for fear of disease and carbon emissions, doing only the basic necessities to stay alive as long as possible, regardless of how horrible a life that creates. This is exactly why technocracy doesn't work, technocrats only know how to optimize within the confines of their narrow speciality. Health officials should have no say over how people choose to live.

smt88 3y ago
This seems tangential to the article, but I'll engage with it anyway. > It feels like there's a group that wants humanity to be living matrix style in pods for fear of disease and carbon emissions This group is so small, it essentially doesn't exist. Nearly 100% of people are not extremists on either of these issues. > regardless of how horrible a life that creates Reasonable precautions from disease and reducing carbon emissions don't create a horrible life. The pandemic was a less-than-once-in-a-generation exception, not a common occurrence. > Health officials should have no say over how people choose to live As long as people want fellow citizens to give them a safety net for their mistakes, their fellow citizens should get to impose harm-reduction measures on them. For example, if someone on a motorcycle chooses not to wear a helmet and not to have health insurance, they could incur millions of dollars of costs that their other people have to pay for. It's reasonable, then, to force people to wear motorcycle helmets. I'm all for letting people choose how to live, as long as they give up the privileges that come with it. For health, that would mean: - no Medicare/Medicaid - no emergency medical care until it's determined that they can pay for it - no publicly-funded investigation of their death if/when they die - no usage of public wheelchair ramps or other accommodations for people with disabilities I'm missing things, but you get the point. If people want to opt out of public health and safety, they should have to opt all the way out. "Libertarians" want to have the freedom to shoot themselves in the foot and have other people subsidize the surgery.
- zer8k 3y ago
  > For example, if someone on a motorcycle chooses not to wear a helmet and not to have health insurance, they could incur millions of dollars of costs that their other people have to pay for. It's reasonable, then, to force people to wear motorcycle helmets. As a long time rider and have lost friends and other riders I can tell you one thing: not wearing a helmet is the easiest way to save everyone money. You're guaranteed to die in all but the least serious of accidents (dropping your bike at a stop), clean up fees are cheap, funerals can be made cheap, the only variable is the cost of therapy for the person who has to mop you up. Of all the people I know who've survived accidents their gear was the reason they were able to pay for a doctor's kid's schooling (and probably a bonus ferrari).You'd think we'd encourage no-helmet laws! I know you're making a larger point here and I am being sarcastic. I just think it's funny you chose this example when it's likely the cheapest way a motorcyclist can die.
  - version_five 3y ago
    I know there are similar findings about e.g. smoking - you die younger and more quickly and so spare socialized healthcare lots of spending. Probably true for obesity, drinking, drug use, etc. From a purely economic standpoint, living to be 100 with various chronic conditions of the kind that come with age (plus drawing social security) is probably the most draining way to live. I don't mean to say it's bad, just that it shows how dumb the thinly veiled telling people how to live in the name of their burden on the healthcare system argument is. If that was really what we cared about the government should be encouraging us all to live fast and die young. But it's about control, not anything else.
    - smt88 3y ago
      This comment is just so ignorant of actual public health that it doesn't feel worthwhile to respond to. When people die young, they don't pay back the enormous amounts of money that was spent on raising and educating them. Smoking is an absolutely perfect example of something that costs society absolutely staggering amounts of money. Do you know how much it costs to treat someone who gets cancer from smoking? Or to treat someone with diabetes who was obese? Or to send someone to rehab for drug use? Any one of these things can easily cost society (government, insurance company, family, the individual themselves) millions of dollars. And the majority of the cost is almost never borne by the individual. If you give yourself cancer and have health insurance, all the other people with health insurance pay for your treatment. > just that it shows how dumb the thinly veiled telling people how to live in the name of their burden on the healthcare system argument is Instead of saying it's dumb, how about you actually explain it or provide examples? There is nothing anywhere that will tell you that letting people smoke would save society money. That's so unbelievably backwards that I can't believe I even read it.
gnicholas 3y ago
> Health officials should have no say over how people choose to live. I'd agree that health officials shouldn't be able to dictate how people live their lives, except when externalities are present (and even then, it's a balancing act). But I think it's great when researchers figure out what the impact is of various common behaviors, so people can decide whether they wish to do those things. This article is just another iteration on that discussion. I welcome Dr. Oster's perspective on this subject because she is generally good at keeping her biases from poisoning her research, she has no conflicts of interest regarding this research, and she is thorough in her analyses. However, I am mindful that she is an economist, not a medical doctor, and I would tend to put more stock in an unbiased MD than econ PhD (even though I majored in econ and generally think the field is useful).
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > I'd agree that health officials shouldn't be able to dictate how people live their lives, except when externalities are present Everything can, and often is, argued to be an externality.
  - comte7092 3y ago
    That’s just another way of saying that we live in a society, not in a social vacuum. Your actions have impacts on other that need to be taken into consideration and there’s a give and take that comes with that. It’s totally reasonable to object to rule by the “experts”, but Americas libertarian streak verges on childish more often than not.
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > That’s just another way of saying that we live in a society, not in a social vacuum. Well, that was my point. It's pointless to say people should be allowed to do what they like unless there are externalities, and then, classify everything as an externality. It's just a more wordy way of saying that people shouldn't be allowed to do what they want.
rendaw 3y ago
I don't drink, and I avoid red and preserved meat. It's not that bad.

et-al 3y ago

Obligatory: https://archive.is/qGVNl https://archive.is/qGVNl "No alcohol" is just the new trend in a long line of dietary extremism (remember the bacon-laden paleo years?) and Oster's is a voice trying to swing the pendulum back. Maybe this is a modern phenomena, but it seems moderation isn't cool and one needs to label themselves and adhere to a singular category or identity nowadays.

MuffinFlavored 3y ago
is the alternative (drinking enough to get buzzed every day) healthy?
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  If there was a limit to healthy alcohol, it would be ~3 drinks / week (on all the J curves I’ve seen, & 12oz beer / 5oz red wine, not 1.5oz liquor) Although I’m still unconvinced where in 0 - 3 is optimal
- et-al 3y ago
  I don't think that's Emily Oster's proposal, either: > But many people do enjoy a drink from time to time: a beer with friends, a cold glass of rosé in the summer, a hot toddy in front of the fire, even just a glass of white wine while cooking at the end of a long day. If we accept that pleasure has value, and that the data are muddy, then the moderation standard makes more sense.
- nicbou 3y ago
  The alternative is enjoying a drink once in a while, ot functional alcoholism.
  - vintermann 3y ago
    We know that if you recommend that, it will change the baseline for what's considered normal/responsible, leading to increase in alcoholism or alcohol-related harm more generally. I agree with the headline "Is a glass of wine harmless? Wrong question". But I think it's wrong for a very different reason. I think it's wrong because it is hyper-individualized (is it harmless for me right now?) question about a collective, social problem. It's a choice we don't actually make as individuals nearly as much as we'd like to believe.

deafpolygon 3y ago

Alcohol is poison no matter which side you come down on in this discussion. Very occasional use is OK (for you, but not for me) and not likely to cause you harm. Just like getting high once a year is probably not going to kill you or cause you any type of irreparable damage. But I'd be hard pressed to be convinced that drinking in any form, at any given frequency- is going to be good or beneficial for the majority of people anyways. If what's in wine is so healthy for you, why isn't it in pill form? Why haven't we found how to extract those sought-after polyphenols, flavonoids, et. al. sans alcohol and served that up yet? Oh, right- we need to support the alcohol industry. I'm a teetotaler, and former recovering alcoholic from a family with a history of alcoholism. So there's probably my bias. I also don't believe we should be consuming as much coffee, or rather caffeine, as we are as that is probably a leading contributor to increasing anxiety and depression. I realize I am unlikely to be very unpopular here. But I don't care. The alcohol and caffeine industries are propped up by those who are addicted - 80% are funded by the 20%; people who handwave this away are forgetting the harm it's causing some and ignoring the damage these individuals go through because they are so normalized in our lives these day. And yes, you can add chocolate to that list (having some caffeine to a small extent). There are huge lobbying and advertising mechanisms in place to ensure it keeps going. I.e., Coca Cola depends on caffeine being present in their drinks. Just take a gander at the top 5 food&beverage companies in the world. Top Food & Beverage Co. in the world (2022) #1 - Nestle (caffeinated drinks, chocolates, addicting food) #2 - PepsiCo (caffeinated drinks) #3 - Anheuser-Busch (alcoholic drinks) #4 - Coca-Cola (caffeinated drinks) #5 - Mondelez international (chocolates, caffeinated drinks)

gnicholas 3y ago
> But I'd be hard pressed to be convinced that drinking in any form, at any given frequency- is going to be good or beneficial for the majority of people anyways. The point of the article was that it's unwise to only consider health consequences of alcohol, particularly when they are so uncertain/ever-changing. Instead, it makes sense to factor in enjoyment (personal utility), which for many people weighs in favor of drinking sometimes. As for your point about pills, I think there are pills that contain distillates from certain types of wine, which supposedly are good for you.

helpfulmandrill 3y ago

I find I enjoy drinking a lot more when I hardly ever do it. If I have a glass of wine a few nights a week, its meh. If I hardly ever drink, the very occasional glass of wine or two is absolute heaven. I'm unlikely to go teetotal, but for me it isn't worth risking my health by overusing something that becomes less pleasurable the more I use it.