by Jillian Wilson in the Huffington Post (thanks to MaryLou P.)
How many alcoholic drinks do you have in an entire week? Five, seven, 10? More? If you have one drink a day, your health could be impacted ― but the powers that be aren’t doing much to make that fact known.
Earlier this month, Vox reported that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Department of Health and Human Services decided not to publish a large federal study on the negative impact alcohol has on our health. A draft of the report, known as the Alcohol Intake and Health Study, was published for public comment in January and is available online.
“This report and our findings were, as we were told, going to inform the new drinking guidelines,” said Priscilla Martinez, the deputy scientific director at the Alcohol Research Group and an author of the report.
Now, instead, a competing report that’s in-line with the country’s current drinking guidelines (one drink or fewer a day for women and two or fewer for men) will inform the guideline update, according to the New York Times. Some of the panelists behind this competing report have financial interests aligned with the alcohol industry, the New York Times reported.
“I think you generally want to have any recommendations about diet or lifestyle behaviors [to be] informed by the most sound science,” Martinez said. “And so that’s what I think is unfortunate about the [the Alcohol Intake and Health Study] not being included.”
The Department of Health and Human Services did not reply to HuffPost’s request for comment.
The Alcohol Intake and Health Study brought important health consequences of drinking alcohol to the spotlight. These health issues happen more with heavy drinking, of course, but researchers found they can start at a pretty low amount of alcohol use. Here’s what to know:
As little as one drink per day is linked to cancer and other chronic diseases, researchers found.
“This report that isn’t going to be released, links [alcohol] with 200-plus health conditions,” said Brooke Scheller, a clinical nutritionist and author of “How to Eat to Change How You Drink.” Scheller was not affiliated with the research.
These conditions ranged from mental health disorders to heart disease to cancer to digestive diseases and more.
Researchers found that the risk of negative health effects started at one drink a day, which increased the risk of developing certain cancers and risk of liver cirrhosis. This is true for both men and women.
The cancers that increased with alcohol use include breast cancer, liver cancer, colorectal cancer, pharyngeal cancer, oral cavity cancer, laryngeal cancer and esophageal cancer.
People who had one drink a day did have a lower risk of stroke, but that benefit was canceled out if folks even occasionally had more than one drink a day. And, the more you drink, the more at risk you are for health problems. (continued on page 2 or here)
I have just started exploring mocktails, and have spoken with Given in our bar and briefly with Patty, about our including them. I think they can be as profitable for Skyline as Cocktails but might be something that a number of us would want to order.