That study's introduction is a little disingenuous and frankly a little alarmist. To break it down:
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not trying to disprove the study. I simply think their introduction is needlessly hyperbolic.
"Alcohol consumption is a well-established risk factor for a range of cancers, accounting for approximately 4% of new cancer cases annually [1, 2]."
The first citation is pay-walled, so I can't confirm, but the abstract states "The net effect of alcohol consumption on health is detrimental, with an estimated 3.8% of all global deaths and 4.6% of global disability-adjusted life-years attributable to alcohol." It says nothing about cancer specifically, but this could just be a vague abstract. Perhaps the data holds up, but a very large fraction of that 3.8% and 4.6% would have to be due to cancer. I'm skeptical.
The second citation however is blatantly misrepresented. It appears to be where the 4% number comes from, but it is UK specific (and almost certainly influenced by UK-specific drinking habits). The authors by contrast present it in a general context. Likewise it's worth noting that the source puts quitting smoking, keeping a healthy weight, and eating more fruits/vegetables as more important in preventing cancer than reducing alcohol consumption. And even at UK levels it's apparently only marginally more important than reducing sun exposure (also a UK-specific result).
They go on to effectively support the statement "alcohol increases cancer risk" in detail and I guess I can't blame them for wanting to grab the reader's attention, but scientific spin doctoring and lack of hard numbers irks me regardless of context.
As for alcohol companies telling their customers as little as legally required about the negative effects of alcohol, I'm glad they put some numbers on the issue but I think we can file that in the "no shit" folder. The policy makers/lesson planners/etc they appear to aim the study at are almost certainly well aware of the concept of conflict-of-interest, and if they aren't then I doubt they're literate enough to be swayed by this study.
> but it is UK specific (and almost certainly influenced by UK drinking habits).
You lost me here. What exactly is your hypothesis about UK "drinking habits" that causes brits to get cancer at significantly higher rates than the rest of the world? All studies have to study some accessible subset of humanity. This one picked the UK.
I mean, it's OK to ask for rigor and point out problems with research, but this is an awfully big whopper of your own. You don't get to just dismiss a fairly straightforward result because warm beer.
Uh... quantity for starters. Not that the UK drinks the most, that honor apparently goes to Belarus according to the WHO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_c...), but the study itself states a dose-relationship response to some forms of cancer. Therefore the amount of alcohol a population consumes would affect the 4% number, and the UK is demonstrably not a representative sample of the rest of the world.
There are also biological/ethnic factors. Native Americans are more susceptible to alcoholism, and Asian populations are more likely to be allergic to alcohol. There are also regional differences in diet and the type of alcohol consumed, even when and how it's consumed. You can't just take a 4% number from one region and apply it generally.
Surely the study you cite was about a correlation to quantity and cancer, though, which would mean they've already corrected for that. To do otherwise would be laughably awful science. If you want to make that assertion, you need to show that the study is flawed, not just assert that you personally believe they are idiots who don't know how to get a paper published.
And the stuff about alcoholism and allergies[1] is just you flailing to find an excuse to discredit a result you don't like. That's not the way science works. At all.
[1] FWIW: it's not an allergy at all. East asians are more likely to carry a defective gene for alcohol dehydrogenase, meaning that ethanol metabolism goes through a different process in their bodies and tends to produce an inflamation response.
The study I cite, and the link you clearly didn't click, is simply a table of countries sorted by alcohol consumption per capita, showing the massive differences in consumption and types of alcohol consumed between countries as of 2010. That's just the largest factor of many that affect cancer rates due to alcohol consumption.
Also you seem to have the impression I'm trying to disprove the study. As I stated in my original comment I'm not, I simply think they were being hyperbolic in the introduction and that annoyed me. And assuming the UK study is the sole source of that 4% number, then it's wrong and alarmist as presented and should be qualified.
I have no trouble believing their results, which are wholly unrelated to this minor point. And I hope your defensive pedantry about the definition of an allergy makes you feel better, because it doesn't disprove my argument.
> The study I cite, and the link you clearly didn't click, is simply a table of countries sorted by alcohol consumption per capita
I meant the UK study. You say it can't be right because brits drink more. I say that it's clearly already written as a correlation between consumption and cancer rates (because what else would it be?), which indeed makes your point sort of specious.
> defensive pedantry about the definition of an allergy
You're pontificating on the internet about the validity of alcohol studies, yet dismissing a clear fact about the same subject as "pedantry". I think that says all that needs to be said about the argument. LOL, as it were.
Factors that (may) affect cancer rates, that vary between countries from the top of my head:
Amount of alcohol consumption, strength of the alcohol (I once read that only above ~15% alchohol gives you oral cancer), content of secondary alcohols like methanol, genetic factors like Alcohol flush reaction, which is known to also lead to higher cancer rates in combination with alcohol and is very common in Asia.
Go to Google Scholar and type in the paper's title - often there will be a link to a publically available copy of the pdf, such as is the case for reference 1.
And you sound like you made up your mind before even really digging into the literature. Your first job as a scientist is to not fool yourself.
I did exactly that actually. The only link to the study I could find in 5 minutes of searching is paywalled. I'm not going to pay $31.50 just to make a point on HN.
Based on the tables in this paper, alcohol-caused cancer is responsible for 0.8% of deaths. I don't see how the numbers in the paper could be used to calculate a value of 4% for any statistic related to alcohol+cancer.
I always wanted to ask this question, Does it is really uncool if someone learns that I had never tasted an alcohol even once in my life, and never intend to do either?
On personal level, I don't really like or have any reason or wish to drink it. Sometimes though, I read that alcohol is good for overall health in small quantities. While, I really doubt it, considering it's additive properties!
Literally, among my friend circle everyone drinks for no reason. Most of the times, Just to be cool! Has alcohol become new norm of today's lifestyle across the world?
Humans have been making and drinking alcohol since at least 10,000 BCE, so it's definitely not a "new norm" [1].
Choosing not to drink is a perfectly reasonable life choice. If you act like a jerk to other people who choose to drink, though, I wouldn't expect that to make you any friends. Live and let live; it's a personal choice either way.
I've never heard anyone talk bad about anyone for not drinking. At most there will be a mild curiosity since there's sometimes a personal story involved as to why.
If you're around people that give you a hard time for not drinking, find another group to be part of. It shouldn't be hard to find people that are more chill. Health nuts, parents, and religious folks in particular tend to develop alcohol-free or alcohol-optional culture.
From your perspective they're drinking for no reason, but there probably is a reason, and that is to lower inhibitions or forget their troubles for a while.
Alcohol is only addictive to alcoholics, and precisely what makes an alcoholic is a subject of ongoing research. Assuming you're not an alcoholic (the more likely option) it's no more addictive than candy. Actually less addictive, as candy doesn't have a hangover.
As for drinking due to peer pressure, well drinking is a social thing. But in my experience most people will be perfectly fine with you not drinking for whatever reason. You might lose out though being the only sober one at the party, and you'll be driving a lot of people home if you have a car. :)
For my part I'll typically go through a 6-pack or bottle of wine on the weekend, I never drink during the week. There are some very tasty alcoholic drinks out there, and while I find getting plastered unpleasant a mild-moderate buzz is quite enjoyable.
Resisting candy is harder than resisting alcohol for me. So in that sense candy is more habit forming.
But habitual candy eaters don't get sick or die from going cold turkey from eating candy (1). It's not clear that clinical addiction is even possible with sugar (2). In that sense, alcohol is much more addictive.
Withdrawal is possible with sugar and I could prove this (with myself, which is miserable). If any scientists want to monitor me for a week while I eat a bunch of ice cream, stop, and get violently ill, I would love to do this for the sake of science.
I'm celiac. My symptoms are best described as withdrawals to various food. I had chronic sinusitis (which is associated with celiacs but not studied anywhere) my whole life until I tried an elimination diet to cut out wheat (at 23). It was the best I had ever felt. Since then (now 28) I have cut out caffeine, sodium nitrites, MSG, and most recently sugar. Once I started feeling better from not eating wheat, it was easier to identify other triggers. I get minor sinus headaches while consuming these regularly (I attribute these to "missing a dose" of something my body is dependent on) and when I cut them out I go into full withdrawal mode. I get a really bad sinus headache, I get nervous shakes, sometimes cold sweats, diarrhea, and vomiting.
I don't drink mostly because I don't enjoy it getting sick (and it's tough to find gluten free, sugar free drinks) but I've been meaning to experiment with alcohol to see if the symptoms are similar.
There is a crazy lack of research done on celiacs. I think withdrawal symptoms could explain a lot. Gluten has been seen to act similar to opioids in patients with Autism (while studies have shown that a gluten free diet does not affect symptoms of Autism, behaviors, etc). I also believe that undiagnosed celiac cases could explain why some people swear MSG causes them problems while many believe it is entirely harmless.
> Alcohol is only addictive to alcoholics, and precisely what makes an alcoholic is a subject of ongoing research.
Could you elaborate on that? From what I know the whole term 'alcoholic' is generally avoided in research precisely because 1) we don't actually know whether 'alcoholics' exist, and 2) we do know quite a bit about the mechanics of addiction, and based on what we know it seems like anyone can be addicted to pretty much anything under the sun.
Based on this, at most one could argue that alcohol is only addictive to those who are susceptible to addiction to alcohol (whether through circumstance or genetic factors). But that would be a tautology.
Some people will really really care but that's a good sign to not have anything to do with that person.
For the most part, people will react to it like not being able to ride a bike or never having seen the ocean; aka: A noteworthy piece of trivia but nothing to get excited about.
The same benefits gleaned from drinking are available from taking an aspirin a day. Wine has some antioxidant effects, I guess, but they are outweighed by the detrimental effects of ingesting, what is basically, a poison.
For the record; I'm not for prohibition and have the occasional drink (though, as I get older, I drink less. I have gotten hangovers from a single drink, in the recent past, and I just don't like it enough to deal with a hangover. Though, that was probably a sugar hangover from a god aweful drink my wife made).
Alcohol has been around for a couple years. If you think everyone who drinks is just trying to be cool, I'd wager that says more about you than it does about them.
I found it much easier to completely eliminate alcohol than to reduce my consumption. You no longer have to think about it, and you're no longer tempted by 'just one more drink' (which becomes even more tempting after a couple of drinks).
I didn't mean to reduce as a goal, but to not hurt yourself emotionally if you ever skip a beat as long as its tiny.
If you finally drink once after a month of being sober, you're at 1 per month vs 30 per month, that's not zero but it's good. So next month you try to beat that, or stay at one drink per month. And in three monthes try to get a zero.
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not trying to disprove the study. I simply think their introduction is needlessly hyperbolic.
"Alcohol consumption is a well-established risk factor for a range of cancers, accounting for approximately 4% of new cancer cases annually [1, 2]."
The first citation is pay-walled, so I can't confirm, but the abstract states "The net effect of alcohol consumption on health is detrimental, with an estimated 3.8% of all global deaths and 4.6% of global disability-adjusted life-years attributable to alcohol." It says nothing about cancer specifically, but this could just be a vague abstract. Perhaps the data holds up, but a very large fraction of that 3.8% and 4.6% would have to be due to cancer. I'm skeptical.
The second citation however is blatantly misrepresented. It appears to be where the 4% number comes from, but it is UK specific (and almost certainly influenced by UK-specific drinking habits). The authors by contrast present it in a general context. Likewise it's worth noting that the source puts quitting smoking, keeping a healthy weight, and eating more fruits/vegetables as more important in preventing cancer than reducing alcohol consumption. And even at UK levels it's apparently only marginally more important than reducing sun exposure (also a UK-specific result).
They go on to effectively support the statement "alcohol increases cancer risk" in detail and I guess I can't blame them for wanting to grab the reader's attention, but scientific spin doctoring and lack of hard numbers irks me regardless of context.
As for alcohol companies telling their customers as little as legally required about the negative effects of alcohol, I'm glad they put some numbers on the issue but I think we can file that in the "no shit" folder. The policy makers/lesson planners/etc they appear to aim the study at are almost certainly well aware of the concept of conflict-of-interest, and if they aren't then I doubt they're literate enough to be swayed by this study.