CLAIM:
No amount of alcohol consumption, light to moderate, can provide health benefits.

FACT:
Alcohol consumption, no matter how little, is not safe.

Recently, some Twitter posts highlighted the absence of any touted health benefits of alcohol consumption.

Alcohol is POISON. There is absolutely zero benefit from it lol the quicker yall wake up & realize that the better off you’ll be

— J👑 (@j_0rdaan) August 25, 2024

In fact, popular Youtuber and doctor, Dr Pal, in an older video goes on to say that there isn't much to the claims that alcoholic beverages like wines are good as they are "full of antioxidants."

"People don't know that even one drink can increase the risk of cancer and also raise blood pressure," he says.

What is the truth then? Does moderate drinking offer any health benefits?

For the benefit of its readers, Team First Check undertook a review of the latest research studies on the touted health benefits of alcohol consumption and here's what we found.

Claims on the benefits of moderate drinking began in 1926, when a publication by American biologist Raymond Pearl, first listed the beneficial health effects of moderate alcohol consumption. Studies that followed, more or less, corroborated this finding. The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) has defined moderate drinking as two drinks a day for men and one for women.

However, more recently, studies have debunked these claims. In a 2023 study published in JAMA network, a group of peer-reviewed magazine journals, scientists studying the alcohol-health relationship, pointed to healthier lifestyles of moderate drinkers, a fact that had been overlooked in all previous studies on the subject.

The WHO went a step further in 2023 and made it clear in a statement, published in The Lancet Public Health, that consumption of alcohol, no matter how little, is not safe. Classified as a carcinogen by the International Agency on Cancer, alcohol is considered as the causative agent for at least seven types of malignancies. These observations are based on a clinical investigation of 23,300 new malignancies in 2017, among light to moderate alcohol consumers.

So while it was earlier believed that moderate drinking has its benefits, newer research suggests no amount of alcohol can be considered safe.

Also read: Fact-check: The effect of alcohol on blood glucose levels