Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Marin Brewing Releases E.S.CHI

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marin
Marin Brewing released their newest beer, an herbal beer made in collaboration with San Anselmo herbalist Dr. Yen-Wei Choong. He runs the Yellow Emperor Natural Healing Center and Zen Garden and has been involved with Chinese herbs all his life. For the last twenty, he’s been working on just the right combination of herbs to improve beer, and make more balanced from the perspective of Chinese medicine.

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Brewmaster Arne Johnson started with his E.S.B. as the base beer. To that, he added 38 pounds of the proprietary mix of Chinese herbs that Dr. Choong created. The nose was subtle herbs, almost gruit-like. The flavors were soft and also subtle, in a good way. The herbs were there but never overpowered the beer, and in fact the two integrated together quite well. It was smooth and easy drinking, almost like a session beer, though I believe the beer is around 5.5% a.b.v. A tasty collaboration.

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Marin Brewing owner Brendan Moylan, Dr. Yen-Wei Choong and Brewmaster Arne Johnson.

For now, the beer is draft only and will be at several events and places during SF Beer Week. They’ve submitted a label for approval, so it may be available in bottles eventually.

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Texas Beer Columnist Throws Beer Under The Bus

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This is strange and perplexing, especially given all the attacks on alcohol in both this country and, as I’ve recently been highlighting, in the UK as well. Beer columnist Eric Braun, who writes for the San Antonio Express-News, in his most recent column began with this incendiary headline: Beer Is Not Health Food. Except that is actually is. Braun seems peeved by that classic of slights, the imagined one. He’s bothered by the fact that during a nearby Houston conference on cancer, the program included — what to regular readers here is old news — the study that xanthohumol (a substance found in hops) is effective in combating cancer. His problem with that comes “when headlines and television announcers start touting that “’beer might actually be good for you.’”

He brings this up because there isn’t enough xanthohumol in the average glass of beer to make any difference and he’s afraid people will use this as excuse to drink more. As someone who read this study when it was first published (and countless more like it) the majority of scientists both in this specific study and those who do this type of work are very, very careful — I’d even say too careful — to NOT suggest that people should use their results to justify increased drinking. I’ve never read one of these studies or their abstracts that come even close to saying people should take their results to mean they should increase their imbibing. Not once. His fears seem misplaced to me. It’s not the scientists at fault, but shoddy journalists who go for style over substance, the “headlines and television announcers [who] start touting that ‘beer might actually be good for you.’” But instead he blames the beer, saying it’s not health food.

Buried toward the end of his piece, Braun finally admits that “[t]he good news is that beer, in moderation, is perfectly healthful for most adults and has been shown to have at least some positive health effects.” I figured he must have known that, but the damage is already done. People will see that headline, conclude what they already believe and what neo-prohibitionists have been telling them — that beer is bad for them — and never even reach the thirteenth paragraph. But it’s the conclusion where he goes off the rails.

The larger point, however, is that if you are drinking to get healthy, you’re doing it all wrong.

Beer should be how you reward yourself for a good day’s work, celebrate a victory for the home team or toast the good life.

That’s just wrong. I think it’s bad advice and nearly irresponsible, in my opinion. The fact is that beer is indeed health food, and can be good for you. The reason Braun has noticed that “several times a year a new medical study is released stating that drinking beer or wine is actually healthful,” is precisely because it is, and evidence keeps mounting to confirm what people have known since the dawn of time. Beer wasn’t called “liquid bread” throughout most of history because it was a cute name, but because it shared the same ingredients and nutritional value and furthermore was safer to drink than water. But beer is, especially good beer, a living food. Real food. That’s been true historically and today beer is far better for you than an equivalent amount of soda, which is loaded with sugar and other chemicals.

But I adamantly disagree that beer should only be a reward, a celebration or used to toast something special, as Braun concludes. That suggests it’s set apart from a healthy lifestyle. He seems to be equating it with dessert, something to have only once in a while. But the fact is that regularly drinking moderately is healthier than either abstaining altogether or drinking heavily. To me that means moderate consumption of alcohol is part of a healthy lifestyle. How could it be otherwise? Drink responsibly and you’ll live longer. How is that not a health food?

From Professor David J. Hanson’s wonderful Alcohol Problems and Solutions:

Moderate drinkers tend to have better health and live longer than those who are either abstainers or heavy drinkers. In addition to having fewer heart attacks and strokes, moderate consumers of alcoholic beverages (beer, wine or distilled spirits or liquor) are generally less likely to suffer hypertension or high blood pressure, peripheral artery disease, Alzheimer’s disease and the common cold.

Sensible drinking also appears to be beneficial in reducing or preventing diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, bone fractures and osteoporosis, kidney stones, digestive ailments, stress and depression, poor cognition and memory, Parkinson’s disease, hepatitis A, pancreatic cancer, macular degeneration (a major cause of blindness), angina pectoris, duodenal ulcer, erectile dysfunction, hearing loss, gallstones, liver disease and poor physical condition in elderly.

I hate to call out a fellow colleague, another beer columnist, but I just can’t figure what Braun’s angle is in this article. What point is he trying to make? Can it really be as simple as he honestly doesn’t believe beer is healthy? He can’t really be worried that someone might read those health claims, even if inflated, and actually decide to start drinking heavily, can he? Looking over some of his other recent columns, it seems like normal run-of-the-mill stuff, talking about favorite craft beers from last year or what beer to drink during the football playoffs.

But there it is, hanging in the air, “beer isn’t health food,” and me silently screaming at my computer screen. “Yes it is! What is the matter with you? Why would you say that?” I just don’t get it. Aren’t there enough attacks on alcohol already?

Stuff & Nonsense, Parts 6 Through 9

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By now, even the casual Bulletin reader has likely noticed that I’ve been following Pete Brown’s brilliant refutation of his national health service’s attack on alcohol, beginning with, Stuff & Nonsense: The UK Health Select Committee Report On Alcohol. The first five parts of Pete’s rebuke have been published over the past few days, and overnight and this morning, west coast time, parts six through nine were posted.

In part 6, Pete tackles the assertion that Alcohol abuse costs the country £55bn a year
Today’s rebuke. In the U.S., this is claim made with alarming regularity, charging alcohol for all manner of sins, and ignoring personal responsibility, common sense and even logic. If there’s a whiff of alcohol anywhere in the vicinity, then by gum the whole thing is alky’s fault. Last year, the Marin Institute did their own study claiming in California alone alcohol costs $38 billion each year. It’s as self-serving a document you’ll ever read. In the UK report, they claim alcohol costs Britain either £20 or £55 billion pounds (which is 32.5 billion dollars or 89.5 billion dollars). This should give you some idea about who whacked our anti-alcohol folks are. The are just over 61 million people in the UK, but almost 37 million in California, yet they assert that, using the UK’s lower figure, alcohol costs more than the entire nation of Great Britain, with roughly half the number of people. It’s just so easy to lie with statistics, and, more profoundly sad, even easier to get the government and the media to swallow those lies without questioning them. But in any event, take a look at Pete’s analysis.

In part 7, the government trots out yet another old favorite, the wolf in sheep’s clothing that is the best way to reduce the harmful effects of alcohol is to reduce overall consumption. All we need to do to get rid of some people doing something we don’t like is make it illegal for everybody. Problem solved. Except that alcohol has been around since before the dawn of civilization and maybe 99.9% (full disclosure, I made that number up but the idea is that the vast majority) of people enjoy the occasional without ruining their lives, their loved ones, their careers, or even their livers. And numerous medical studies confirm a wide range of health benefits, not least of which is the fact that people who drink alcohol in moderation tend to outlive those who never touch the stuff.

In the case of the UK report, they claim to be advising just toward reducing consumption, but to where? To what level? It’s already be shown beyond doubt that the recommended levels that the UK advises were made up wholesale, pulled out of thin air. Just the notion that recommended safe amounts are the same for any two men or women is patently absurd, yet that’s the standard. The other problem I see with arguing for less overall consumption is that it’s a slippery slope. Today’s reduction is tomorrow’s outright ban. If less is more, then none must be best of all, right?

Part eight brings up to the most pernicious argument of all, and the one that always sticks in my craw. “It’s for the children,” they cry. “Doesn’t anybody think of the children.” What the UK says, is Alcohol advertising and promotion must be tightly regulated because it encourages underage drinking. While the report says the opposite, the truth is drinking is declining in the UK, and I suspect that’s true here, too. But it’s Pete’ summary that is most telling, showing the chain of absurdity.

The HSC says drinking among children is increasing. But recent official figures suggest it is falling.

The HSC simply asserts that advertising encourages young people to drink. But there is no evidence of a causal link, despite people looking very hard to try to find one.

So they imply that there is a link between awareness of alcohol brands and propensity to drink underage, because they can prove awareness. But there’s no evidence of this either.

So after having spent a long time discussing the content of alcohol ads, they then say it’s not the content, but the quantity of it that has an effect. There’s no evidence of this either.

So in the end, they disregard testimony from advertising professionals, and simply choose to believe the testimony of people who want alcohol advertising to be banned, say it is damaging to children, but can produce no evidence to back up their assertion.

Which brings us to part 9, Pubs are a problem. If alcohol is a problem, then the places where people drink it must also be dens of inequity, mustn’t they?

To sum up, if this is new to you, start with Pete Brown’s Health Select Committee Report on Alcohol. Part One (of 10) was published Sunday, Alcohol consumption in the UK is increasing. On Monday, parts two, 25% of the UK population is drinking at hazardous or harmful levels, and three, Binge drinking is increasing, were published. Tuesday saw part four: Alcohol is becoming cheaper/more affordable, and yesterday part five, Alcohol related hospital admissions — and the cost of alcohol to the NHS — are soaring, was published online. Overnight and today, part six, Alcohol abuse costs the country £55bn a year, part seven, The best way to reduce the harmful effects of alcohol is to reduce overall consumption, part eight, Alcohol advertising and promotion must be tightly regulated because it encourages underage drinking, and part nine, Pubs are a problem, went up. Once again, stay tuned. There’s one more part to go.

Stuff & Nonsense, Part 5

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By now, even the casual Bulletin reader has likely noticed that I’ve been following Pete Brown’s brilliant refutation of his national health service’s attack on alcohol, beginning with, Stuff & Nonsense: The UK Health Select Committee Report On Alcohol. The first four parts of Pete’s rebuke have been published over the past few days, and now part five is up.

Today’s rebuke concerns hospital admissions and the burden on the health care system, a facetious claim made on both sides of the pond. Over here, for example, an accident where one of the passengers had been drinking is often classified as an alcohol-related accident. In the UK:

In terms of official figures, what they don’t tell you is that when they are compiled, there’s a sharp difference between hospital admission and deaths that are considered wholly attributable to alcohol, and those where alcohol is a secondary or partial factor. And guess what? Only 25% of total ‘alcohol related’ hospital admissions are judged to be entirely due to alcohol.

At best, that simply misleads the statistics, making them sound more alarming than they really are. But it gets even worse, and in some ways goes beyond what American Neo-Prohibitionsts have been willing to say, at least so far.

The Report [implies] that if you drink, you are more likely to be a rapist, a child abuser, a wifebeater, a suicide, and that the fact that you drink makes you so. As Phil [Mellows] pointed out when he addressed the rape issue, this is not only inaccurate, it is astonishingly offensive to drinkers.

We’ve had groups here use images of a syringe filled with beer, equating beer with heroin, but so far as I know, they haven’t called those of us who drink rapists … yet. But they do seem to believe that virtually every societal ill can be pinned on alcohol.

But when someone does something appalling and then says, “The drink made me do it,” they are denying personal responsibility for their actions and we tend to dismiss this as a lame excuse. The Report seems to buy it 100%.

I could go on and on, but it’s best if I just suggest at this point that you go over and read part 5, Alcohol related hospital admissions — and the cost of alcohol to the NHS — are soaring. It’s the longest so far, but definitely worth your time.

If this is new to you, start with Pete Brown’s Health Select Committee Report on Alcohol. Part One (of 10) was published Sunday, Alcohol consumption in the UK is increasing. On Monday, parts two, 25% of the UK population is drinking at hazardous or harmful levels, and three, Binge drinking is increasing, were published. Tuesday saw part four: Alcohol is becoming cheaper/more affordable, and today part five, Alcohol related hospital admissions — and the cost of alcohol to the NHS — are soaring, was published online. Once again, stay tuned.

British Hypocrisy On Beer & Health

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I take no pleasure, though a certain perverse comfort, in the fact that America is not alone in its hypocrisy when it comes to alcohol policy and its government heath organizations. Today in the BBC News is another example of this phenomenon. (Thanks to Pete Brown for pointing this one out.)

In a title no doubt intended to inspire fear and paranoia, Parents Giving Children Alcohol Fuels Binge Drinking, Sir Liam Donaldson, England’s chief medical officer, warned parents that “letting children taste alcohol to ready them for adulthood was ‘misguided'” and claimed “[e]vidence showed that this could lead to binge drinking in later life.” Curiously, he offered no support whatsoever for this so-called evidence apart from saying it. You’d think the reporter might have asked him for that evidence, but no. Way to probe for the story, Marty.

Donaldson also claimed, again without any support, that “[t]he science is clear – drinking, particularly at a young age, a lack of parental supervision, exposing children to drink-fueled events and failing to engage with them as they grow up are the root causes from which our country’s serious alcohol problem has developed.” The problem with that statement is that what he’s complaining about is that some parents give their children alcohol in a controlled environment, specifically NOT with a “lack of parental supervision,” etc. that he then claims is the problem. That makes it a problem that’s effectively the opposite of the one he starts out fomenting about and is indicated in the article’s headline. I should also mention that unlike most U.S. states, UK parents can legally “give their children alcohol at home from the age of five onwards.”

But, they continue, “[r]ates of teenage drunkenness are higher amongst both the children of parents who drink to excess and the children of parents who abstain completely.” So read that again. Kids drink more later in life if their parents either drink too much or not at all. That suggests that children of moderate drinkers do not, and the only way those children would know their parents are moderate drinkers if if they actually saw them drinking, something neo-prohibitionists are decidedly against.

Then again, as if forgetting that he began with the premise that parents giving their kids alcohol was the problem, he acknowledges. “Whilst parents have a greater influence on their children’s drinking patterns early on, as they grow older their friends have a greater influence. It is therefore crucial for parents to talk to their children about alcohol and its effects.” Talk, apparently, but not model responsible behavior or educate their children about alcohol.

But the upshot at the end is another opinion altogether, and one that contradicts everything that’s come before it.

Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians and chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance, said: “We know that adults who drink sensibly tend to pass these habits on and that some families choose to introduce alcohol to their children younger than 15 in a supportive environment.”

Well, if moderate drinking parents pass their responsible habits to their children — which I also believe they do — and some accomplish that by introducing alcohol to their kids successfully, then how exactly is this the problem that Dr. Donaldson seems to think it is? I tend to put my faith in the doctor who specializes in alcohol and health — Gilmore — rather than the administrator at the top, but perhaps that’s just me. I may simply be responding to the most reasonable position, and the one I happen to agree with.

So essentially, this article starts out with a bold headline and scary quotes from one of the country’s top docs, offered with no support whatsoever, and yet it turns out if you read all the way through it, that what they started out trying to scare people about isn’t even really true, settled or consistent. Of course, I learned in my college journalism classes that many readers tend to read the headline and maybe a paragraph or two, before their interest wanes and they move on. That’s why I was taught to put all the pertinent information in the early paragraphs and not leave it for a trick ending that contradicts the premise. (To be fair, I often ignore that advice, too, but not when I’m writing for a newspaper.) To me, that suggests an agenda on the part of either the author or the publisher. Surely an editor would have noticed the article wasn’t even internally consistent. But whatever the reason it was written this way, it certainly did beer or the truth no favors.

Bone Density & Beer Redux

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Just yesterday I wrote about beer and bone density and a recent study confirming the positive benefits in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Today yet another unrelated study appears to confirm the findings of the first, as reported in today’s Burton Mail. In the article, Dr. Jonathan Powell, head of a bio-mineral research department in Cambridge, said the “key to beer’s benefits is silicon — a chemical more commonly associated which enhancing chests than fattening stomachs. Historically, silicon has not been seen as an essential nutrient, but our research suggests that it could play an important role in bone health. We have shown that silicon appears to have a beneficial effect in increasing bone mineral density.” Beer of course, is rich in silicon. “The combination of the silicon and alcohol intake from moderate beer consumption appears to promote both bone and connective tissue health.” This study’s results will be presented at a conference here in California. The article goes on to mention a third study, “published earlier this year which showed that moderate ethanol consumption has an acute, specific effect in reducing bone loss.” It seems pretty clear at this point that all the science is indeed finding a positive correlataion between moderate beer drinking and increased bone density. I’ll drink to that.

Bone Density Strengthened By Moderate Beer Drinking

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Although Reuters only recently wrote about this new study, Moderate Drinking May Help Build Bone Density, it’s based on a study published in February in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. According to the journal abstract:

Goal: Our aim was to determine the association between intake of total alcohol or individual alcoholic beverages and bone mineral density.

Design: Adjusting for potential confounding factors, we examined alcohol intakes and BMD at 3 hip sites and the lumbar spine in 1182 men and in 1289 postmenopausal and 248 premenopausal women in the population-based Framingham Offspring cohort (age: 29–86 yrs.).

Results: Men were predominantly beer drinkers, and women were predominantly wine drinkers. Compared with nondrinkers, hip BMD was greater (3.4–4.5%) in men consuming 1–2 drinks/d of total alcohol or beer, whereas hip and spine BMD were significantly greater (5.0–8.3%) in postmenopausal women consuming >2 drinks/d of total alcohol or wine. Intake of >2 drinks/d of liquor in men was associated with significantly lower (3.0–5.2%) hip and spine BMD than was intake of 1–2 drinks/d of liquor in men. After adjustment for silicon intake, all intergroup differences for beer were no longer significant; differences for other alcohol sources remained significant. Power was low for premenopausal women, and the associations were not significant.

Conclusions: Moderate consumption of alcohol may be beneficial to bone in men and postmenopausal women. However, in men, high liquor intakes (>2 drinks/d) were associated with significantly lower BMD. The tendency toward stronger associations between BMD and beer or wine, relative to liquor, suggests that constituents other than ethanol may contribute to bone health. Silicon appears to mediate the association of beer, but not that of wine or liquor, with BMD. Other components need further investigation.

There was nothing ambiguous about the results of the study, “it’s very clear,’ said Dr. Katherine Tucker of Boston’s Tufts University that the positive effect on bone density from beer and wine is “larger than what we see for any single nutrient, even for calcium.”

From the Reuters article:

Men who had a glass or two of wine or beer daily had denser bones than non-drinkers, the researchers found, but those who downed two or more servings of hard liquor a day had significantly lower BMD than the men who drank up to two glasses of liquor daily.

The women who drank more than two glasses a day of alcohol or wine had greater BMD than the women who drank less. Nonetheless, this finding shouldn’t be seen as meaning that the more a woman drinks the better it is for her bones, Tucker noted; there were simply not that many women in the study who drank much more than this.

Beer is an excellent source of silicon, a mineral needed for bone health that has become increasingly rare in the modern diet, the researcher noted. Beer’s silicon content accounted for at least some of its bone-building effects in men, she added; there were too few women who drank beer to draw conclusions about how the mineral affected female bone density.

Sounds like you your bones will thank you for drinking beer moderately. A beer a day keeps the bone doctor away?

Inventing Binge Drinking

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I’ve long railed against the various governmental health department definitions of “binge drinking” as being out of touch with reality and self-serving to anti-alcohol groups. In the U.S., the CDC defines binge drinking as “five drinks in a row” and in the UK it’s too many “units of alcohol” in a given day (or number of hours). But that wasn’t always how it was defined.

In a recent issue of the Social History of Medicine, an Oxford Journal, social scientists Virginia Berridge, Rachel Herring and Betsy Thom published Binge Drinking: A Confused Concept and its Contemporary History.

Here’s the summary of the article:

Binge drinking is a matter of current social, political and media concern. It has a longterm, but also a recent, history. This paper discusses the contemporary history of the concept of binge drinking. In recent years there have been significant changes in how binge drinking is defined and conceptualised. Going on a ‘binge’ used to mean an extended period (days) of heavy drinking, while now it generally refers to a single drinking session leading to intoxication. We argue that the definitional change is related to the shifts in the focus of alcohol policy and alcohol science, in particular in the last two decades, and also in the role of the dominant interest groups.

To me, one of the key points of this article is how the definition has changed to create a panic of increasing binge drinkers when it’s far more likely rates are roughly the same, only the definition has changed so that it not only seems like the problem has grown worse, but so that anti-alcohol advocates have a convenient new method by which they can base ever more draconian policy demands.

Binge drinking as a concept has a distant history: but it also has a recent one. The term has come in recent years to describe two quite distinct phenomena. First, it is used to describe a pattern of drinking that occurs over an extended period (usually several days) set aside for the purpose. This is the ‘classic’ definition, linked to clinical definitions of the disease of alcoholism, as in Jellinek’s 1960 classification. Secondly, binge drinking has come to be used to describe a single drinking session leading to intoxication, often measured as the consumption of more than a specific number of drinks on one occasion, often by young people. There is no consensus on how many drinks constitutes this version of binge drinking—how much alcohol—and a variety of ‘cut-offs’ are used.

The second meaning has become prominent in recent years, is used extensively in research and informs UK policy. The ‘new’ definition has largely, but by no means entirely replaced the ‘classic’ definition, and both terms co-exist, if somewhat uneasily at times, in the alcohol field. Thus, it was evident from our research that there has been a shift in recent history in the meaning of the term. What was less clear was how the current confused definition of binge drinking has come to hold sway in public and policy discussions when it seems to be different from definitions which operated in the past. This is an issue which has implications for policy. But it is also a change which throws light on the relationship between science and policy. Our overall hypothesis, which is set out in this discussion paper, is that the definitional change must be related to the shifts in the focus of alcohol policy and alcohol science, in particular in the last two decades, and also to the role of the dominant interest groups in the alcohol field. It is not a change simply in the types of people drinking and the ways in which they drink, but rather an issue of perception which tells us something about the ways in which science and policy interact. [My emphasis.]

And the perception, as well as the target, has indeed changed. While binge drinkers used to be thought of as solitary older males, today the binge drinking “focus is on women and young people.” Although they’re careful in the wording of the article, I think it’s clear they’re saying that the shift in defining binging has been a bad idea, as it’s taken the focus away from the people who really need help and placed it on a more convenient target that allows neo-prohibitionist groups to sound the alarm about the problems of underage drinking — the children, always the children. People naturally want to protect kids from harm, and so it’s much easier to advance destructive alcohol policy under the rubric of underage drinking issues. I’d argue that this is even likely the reason for the shift in the definition, to advance the anti-alcohol agenda more effectively. Fear is always more effective than truth, sadly, in motivating people.

Among the journal article’s conclusions:

Policy makers should be aware of the context in which they operate. Concepts do not appear out of thin air, but have their own history. This study can in fact be seen as feeding in ‘evidence’ to policy on the rational model. On a more theoretical level, this change of definitions over time is also a case study of evidence and policy itself. It tells us how science interacts with policy making and the policy environment.

Exactly. In this case, the science was manipulated and created to further a specific anti-alcohol agenda over the last two decades. As a result, everyone I know is a binge drinker. That’s what happens when science no longer reflects reality but instead is used to remake it.

Want A Healthier Heart? Drink More Beer!

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health
This has got to drive the anti-alcohol lobby nuts, and especially their medical co-conspirators who continue to insist that a binge drinker is simply someone who drinks five or more drinks in one session. The UK newspaper, The Independent, had an interesting article today, provocatively titled “Drink half a dozen beers every day and have a healthier heart: Teetotallers more likely to have heart attack than drinkers, study shows.”

According to the article, “Drinking a bottle of wine a day, or half a dozen beers, cuts the risk of heart disease by more than half in men, it has been shown.” That’s based on a study just published in the medical journal Health entitled Alcohol intake and the Risk of coronary heart disease in the Spanish EPIC cohort study.

In the Abstract:

Background
The association between alcohol consumption and Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) has been broadly studied. Most studies conclude that moderate alcohol intake reduces the risk of CHD. There are many discussions on whether the association is causal or biased. The objective is to analyse the association between alcohol intake and risk of CHD in the Spanish cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC).

Methods
Participants from the EPIC Spanish cohort were included (15,630 men and 25,808 women). The median follow up period was 10 years. Ethanol intake was calculated using a validated dietary history questionnaire. Participants with a definite CHD event were considered cases. A Cox regression model was performed adjusted for relevant covariables and stratified by age. Separate models were carried out for men and women.

Results
Crude incidence rate of CHD was 300.6/100,000 person-years for men and 47.9/100, 000 person-years for women. Moderate, high and very high consumption was associated with a reduce risk of CHD in men: HR 0.86 (95% CI= 0.54-1.38) for former drinkers, 0.64 (95% CI= 0.4-1.0) for low, 0.47 (95% CI= 0.31-0.73) for moderate, 0.45 (95% CI= 0.29-0.69) for high and 0.49 (95% CI= 0.28-0.86) for very high consumers. In women a negative association was found with p values above 0.05 in all categories.

Conclusions
In men aged 29-69 years, alcohol intake was associated with a more than 30% lower CHD incidence. Our study is based on a large prospective cohort study and is free of the abstainer error.

The Independent distills it in clearer language:

In one of the largest studies of the link between alcohol and heart disease, researchers have found that the protective effects of a daily tipple are not limited to those who drink moderately but also extend to those who consume at what are conventionally considered to be dangerously high levels.

The research was conducted among 15,000 men and 26,000 women aged from 29 to 69 who were followed for 10 years.

The results showed that those who drank a little — a glass of wine or a bottle of beer every other day — had a 35 per cent lower risk of a heart attack than those who never drank. Moderate drinkers, consuming up to a couple of glasses of wine a day or a couple of pints of ordinary bitter, had a 54 per cent lower risk.

The surprise was that heavy drinkers consuming up to a bottle of wine or six pints of ordinary bitter had a similar 50 per cent reduction in risk of a heart attack to moderate drinkers. Those drinking at even higher levels were still half as likely to suffer a heart attack as the teetotallers.

Larraitz Arriola, who led the study, said alcohol caused 1.8 million deaths a year around the world and 55,000 deaths among young people under 30 in Europe alone. “The first thing to say about our research is that alcohol is very harmful. If you drink heavily, you should drink moderately. The more you drink, the worse off you will be.” The researchers only looked at the effect of alcohol on the heart and confirmed what 30 years of studies have shown — that it is protective. The effect was independent of the form in which the alcohol was taken, as beer, wine or spirits. However, people who only drank wine had slightly less protection.

Not surprisingly, British “scientists” are calling the results “flawed,” most likely because it flies in the face of their politically-motivated advice and the ridiculous (and recently revealed to be completely arbitrary) “units of alcohol” that set the nation’s alcohol policy for over twenty years. In a BBC article, they’re still treating the guidelines as if they mean something, which is almost funny.

In May of 2006, Danish study that also found healthy heart benefits for alcohol drinkers, though in that study they concluded that drinking levels above moderate would not increase benefits. This new Spanish study appears to conclude otherwise. In every article I’ve seen on this study, everyone is scrambling to make sure to tell people not to go out and start drinking more, due to other risks from heavy drinking. I’d say anyone that suddenly started binging based on this study probably deserves whatever ill effects they experience. But seriously, do health professionals really believe people are that stupid? I’m sure there are a few stupid enough (P.T. Barnum had it right) but it’s more likely they were already unhealthy drinkers just looking for an excuse.

What I take away from this is simply that the arbitrary and self-serving definitions of binge drinking are not only wrong, but very, very wrong. I attend beer dinners all the time, drinking an average of four, five or six different beers (and sometimes more) over several hours, paired with several courses. These dinners cost $50, $75, $100 (and sometimes more). They are attended by people who can afford that, people with good jobs, professionals, people with families, upstanding members of their communities. Yet in the U.S., the CDC claims if you have “five or more drinks in a row,” you’re an unhealthy binge drinker, endangering your own life, and possibly those around you. That makes every one of the people at all the beer dinners I attend, binge drinkers, and, to some in the anti-alcohol movement, automatic alcoholics, too. Could any standard be farther from reality?

Despite all the warnings of binge drinking, it appears by defining it in a way that’s so far removed from ordinary experience, that it actually makes it completely meaningless. Certainly there are people who drink too much and put their health at risk. But lumping them together with those who occasionally drink “five or more drinks in a row” safely and without sinking into alcoholism, the problems of the people who really need help never get addressed. All it does is give the AnAl’s more ammunition to scare people with, and few media outlets ever call them on it. After all, it has the stamp of a government agency. But we all know it’s not accurate by any stretch of the imagination to call the average beer dinner attendee a binge drinker. At least now we know their heart will get a boost. In the end, I think the best advice is “everything in moderation … including moderation.”

FDA Gives Alcohol/Caffeine Drinks 30 Days To Prove It’s Safe

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caffeine
The FDA announced today that they’ve sent a letter to almost 30 manufacturers of alcohol drinks that also contain caffeine. The FDA is giving these companies 30 days to essentially prove that they’re safe. The move is undoubtedly motivated by a bullying letter sent to the FDA in September by 18 state Attorneys General. That letter was itself the product of pressure brought to bear by neo-prohibitionist groups at the state and local level.

From the press release:

“The increasing popularity of consumption of caffeinated alcoholic beverages by college students and reports of potential health and safety issues necessitates that we look seriously at the scientific evidence as soon as possible,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs.

Of the combined use of caffeine and alcohol among U.S. college students in the few studies on this topic, the prevalence was as high as 26 percent.

Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a substance added intentionally to food (such as caffeine in alcoholic beverages) is deemed “unsafe” and is unlawful unless its particular use has been approved by FDA regulation, the substance is subject to a prior sanction, or the substance is Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS). FDA has not approved the use of caffeine in alcoholic beverages and thus such beverages can be lawfully marketed only if their use is subject to a prior sanction or is GRAS. For a substance to be GRAS, there must be evidence of its safety at the levels used and a basis to conclude that this evidence is generally known and accepted by qualified experts.

The FDA alerted manufacturers to the fact that the agency is considering whether caffeine can lawfully be added to alcoholic beverages. The FDA noted that it is unaware of the basis upon which manufacturers may have concluded that the use of caffeine in alcoholic beverages is GRAS or prior sanctioned. To date, the FDA has only approved caffeine as an additive for use in soft drinks in concentrations of no greater than 200 parts per million. It has not approved caffeine for use at any level in alcoholic beverages.

The FDA requested that, within 30 days, the companies produce evidence of their rationale, with supporting data and information, for concluding that the use of caffeine in their product is GRAS or prior sanctioned. FDA’s letter informed each company that if FDA determines that the use of caffeine in the firm’s alcoholic beverages is not GRAS or prior sanctioned, FDA will take appropriate action to ensure that the products are removed from the marketplace.

Notice that the press release outlines the rationale for the safety check because of “increasing popularity” by “college students” along with “reports of potential health and safety issues,” also known as anecdotes and stories people made up to scare other people. That’s about as flimsy a reason as I can imagine. They don’t seem concerned about older adults, us post-college folks which suggests to me that it’s not really about safety at all.

I think what bothers me about this is simply how obviously it’s the FDA bowing to pressure from anti-alcohol groups. Last time I checked, caffeine was legal. Alcohol is also legal if you’re the “right” age. People have been drinking alcohol and caffeine concurrently, myself included, for centuries. I’m drinking Tejava (my daily ritual) as I write this and by lunchtime I’ll be ready for a beer, followed by more caffeine this afternoon to fend off the mid-afternoon urge to nap. More recently — though even this was years ago — Red Bull and vodka became a very popular cocktail, mixing the two chemicals caffeine and alcohol. Certain people were worried then, too, but I’ve never heard of any real danger posed from that drink and the many imitations and variations it spawned. Even if they banned every alcohol and caffeine drink, people can, and probably will, go right on mixing them on their own. What’s to stop them? Actually, banning them would likely cause an increase in combination drinking, because people love a taboo.

All that would happen, really, is the harming of a few dozen alcohol companies, which I suspect is the Anti-Alcohols (or AnAl’s) game. Even in the unlikely event that they declare the pairing of the two substances a danger, it won’t, and they can’t, stop people from mixing them on their own. Even if it was made illegal, people would never stop having a few drinks followed by a cup of coffee. It’s absurd, really, like they’re trying to remake the world in the image of a Kafka novel.