Sorry, Red Wine Drinkers: Alcohol Is Just Bad For Your Health | Devi Sridhar
Tto say yes to that glass of wine or beer, or just grab a juice? That’s the question many people ask themselves as they grab an after-work drink, wind down on a Friday night, or are in the supermarket pondering what to pick up for the weekend. I’m not here to give my opinion on the philosophy of drinking, and how much you should drink is a question only you can answer. But it’s worth highlighting the updated advice from leading health authorities on alcohol. It might sway you one way or the other.
Binge drinking is known to be harmful, but what about light to moderate drinking? In January 2023, the World Health Organization came out with a strong statement: there is no safe level of drinking for health. The agency stressed that alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer, including breast cancer, and that ethanol (alcohol) directly causes cancer when our cells break it down.
WHO reviews the current evidence and finds that there are no studies showing that alcohol consumption has a beneficial effect that outweighs the harmful effects it causes to the body. A senior WHO official noted that the only thing we can say for sure is that “the more you drink, the more harmful it is – or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is”. It makes little difference to your body, or your risk of cancer, whether you pay £5 or £500 for a bottle of wine. Alcohol is harmful in whatever form.
Countries have now started to incorporate this position into their national guidelines. For example, in 2023, Canada introduced new national recommendations stating that abstinence is the only risk-free approach, and noting that two drinks (around four units) per week is low risk. This was a change from 2011, when the guidelines allowed a maximum of 10 drinks (around 20 units) and 15 drinks (around 30 units) for women and men respectively. The NHS has adopted the language of “no completely safe level of drinking”, with the guideline to drink no more than 14 units, or about six glasses of wine/pints of beer, per week.
What about red wine? Could this be good for us? Twenty years ago, studies began to emerge suggesting that red wine could be good for the heart, especially as part of a Mediterranean diet. However, some of these studies failed to take into account that red wine drinkers were more likely to be educated, wealthy, physically active, eat vegetables, and have health insurance. In 2006, a new analysis that took into account health-influencing variables found no benefits to drinking red wine. Since then, evidence has mounted that even one glass of wine a day increases the risk of high blood pressure and heart problems.
The alcohol industry has been smart about this and funded studies which – surprise, surprise – show the benefits of moderate drinking. This is a lesson in why you should always look at who is funding the study, and whether there is a conflict of interest. The obfuscation of studies by commercial interests (a tactic also famously used by the tobacco industry) has led to statements, such as by economist Emily Osterthat it is safe to have one drink per day during pregnancy. This has been debunked: Brain scans of fetuses from 2022 showed that even one alcoholic drink a week during pregnancy is harmful to the baby’s developing brain.
In summary, there is broad consensus that alcohol poisons our bodies. This is not a moral judgment: it is what large-scale epidemiological studies have shown. This should inform government policies, such as health warnings on alcohol labels, bans on multi-buy promotions, restrictions on marketing and advertising, and greater awareness of the health risks of drinking. However, we must be careful not to fall into puritanism. We live in a democracy where people have the freedom to drink and make choices about their health.
And I admit that, although I work in public health, I still enjoy the occasional drink. We humans make decisions about the risks we take every day, and those of us who work in public health need to remember that not everyone is just concerned with living longer; being happy with how we live each day is also important. We eat that doughnut or bag of crisps knowing it’s not good for us, just as we drive long distances on motorways knowing there is always a risk of a fatal traffic accident. And with alcohol, for many people, there is happiness in sharing a bottle of wine or having a few pints with friends.
There is no moral judgement on how people choose to live their lives and the choices they make. But yes, drinking does pose a health risk, and it is worth us, and governments, finally acknowledging this fact, even if we would rather not think about it.