Explained: why scientific claims for ‘healthy’ boozing just don’t add up

Do you drink alcohol? Do you think moderate consumption is healthy? Well, if you thought a little bit of boozing could benefit your health, experts want you to think again!

SEE MORE No amount of alcohol is ‘safe’ for consumption, finds Oxford study

Most people are aware of the dangers of alcohol consumption, but studies claiming that moderate drinking may have a positive effect makes things fairly confusing.

However, a new German study says that there’s no real added benefit of drinking any amount of alcohol. In fact, the so-called benefits can be chalked up to risky behaviours of alcohol abstainers in their earlier life.

Published in the journal PLOS Medicine, the research found that factors like former dependence on alcohol or drugs, risky drinking and cigarette smoking significantly affected the health risks in alcohol-abstainers.

The team found that people who don’t drink alcohol will not usually have a higher mortality risk than those who consume low to moderate amounts. This means that there is no reason to recommend drinking alcohol for health benefits.

SEE MORE Think before you drink: 62k cancer cases in India linked to alcohol consumption

So, why do some studies claim moderate drinking is good for you?

A 2016 meta-review of 87 studies in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that such estimates are significantly altered by study design and characteristics. Once you adjust for abstainer biases and quality-related study characteristics, you don’t see any significant reduction in mortality risk for low-volume drinkers.