> Europeans do drink a lot, but it's in moderation, if that makes sense. Less binge drinking all at once, more drinks during meals and spread throughout the wee

> Europeans do drink a lot, but it's in moderation, if that makes sense. Less binge drinking all at once, more drinks during meals and spread throughout the week. We all know the liver processes alcohol at a specific rate so this is less damaging to health. I'm sceptical that this is a big factor. Ireland and the UK have a big binge drinking problem, but Ireland's in the top end of European countries for life expectancy; the UK's a bit lower down the list, but still just about at the EU average. Though, you also have to be careful with small differences, because the data is often imperfect. One darkly funny thing to come out of the covid pandemic was that there were significantly more very elderly people in Ireland than it was generally believed; this showed when the covid vaccination rate for the over-85 age cohort went over 100% (I think it hit 109% by the end). It turned out that the central statistics office's population estimates had simply been wrong; they had been running off an assumed death rate since the last census which turned out to be overly pessimistic.