This article has a couple of problems. The claim that no amount of alcohol (ethanol), no matter how small, is beneficial is not interesting. Nobody in their ri

This article has a couple of problems. The claim that no amount of alcohol (ethanol), no matter how small, is beneficial is not interesting. Nobody in their right mind believes otherwise. There is no such widespread belief. (But see below). The article is using it as a strawman version of widely believed claims which are that certain alcoholic drinks are beneficial in moderation (due to content other than the ethanol). Much more important than no small amount of ethanol being beneficial is the fact that ethanol has threshold values below which it is safe. I.e. there are quantities of ethanol that are so small as to be harmless. Ethanol occurs naturally in fermented foods and ripe fruits. It can even be produced in the gut. It would be crazy to tell people to avoid all traditional fermented foods and ripe fruits, which are safe. The claim that ingested ethanol offsets no benefit is actually false, because ethanol contains calories; it can be used for energy. It's obviously not a unique benefit, but a benefit is a benefit. If you ingest an amount of ethanol so small that it is harmless, then you're obtaining a small number of calories from it, and so there is a quantifiable net benefit (if you need the calories). The article is right mainly about no alcohol during pregnancy, the claims about red wine. However, the latter requires nuance: the benefits of the substances found in red wine are real; they may just be offset by the negative effects of the alcohol. The polyphenols like resveratrol can be obtained directly from the skins of red grapes without having to produce wine first.