Comment by t1lthesky | Hacker News Reader

Comment by t1lthesky | Hacker News Reader

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I think we can all agree that heavy alcohol consumption is bad for your health. However I'm pretty skeptical that a moderate amount of alcohol consumption, say 1-2 drinks per week, is any higher risk to your health than the many other activities we engage in to live a happy and engaging life, as other commentators have pointed out.

Anecdotally it seems that the people who take these things to the extremes (i.e. never have even a single drink because drinking alcohol is bad for you) tend to stress out about a lot of other things as well. Obviously if someone doesn't drink because they find the effects unpleasant that's different, but I'm talking about the kinds of people who for example are overly concerned about microplastics (to the point of not eating any food that has been stored in a plastic container), or air quality (co2 monitors in every room, etc), or diet (will not touch anything with nitrates, only eat unprocessed foods, etc).

To a point, yes all of these things are legitimately harmful to your health, but having this kind of mentality is also not great for your well-being. Really perhaps the highest health-yield lifestyle change they could make is to relax a bit more and try not to get stressed out as much through meditation/mindfulness

Not sure why, but SV in particular seems to attract a lot of people with this kind of mentality.

There are very good reasons to avoid alcohol. Unborn child during (planned) pregnancy, for starters. Having to drive / commute / get home. Employment. Social responsibilities. Then there's the myth that in dinner it 'evaporates' (TL;DR it does not in a meaningful way). Think about it as well: if it would, they wouldn't take the effort to include alcohol. Alcohol is highly addictive, which alone is a valid reason to be afraid of it (e.g. my partner's father was an alcohol addict *and indirectly died from his addiction). There's a nice saying about if it'd get discovered tomorrow instead of 'existing' already it'd get illegal right away. It is also a hard drug. The only one available without a prescription. Having a high enough age ("being an adult") suffices. Turns out, a lot of people have the number of an adult age, but not the responsibility, plus more often than not alcohol addiction is a symptom of deeper rooted issues involving the individual. Still, it aids in a downward spiral.

No one is saying its ok to drink while pregnant, there are many things that you can normally do that you shouldn't do when you are pregnant. Fly for example, or engage in extreme sports like skiing. Similarly, you should not drink prior to driving, in the same way that you shouldn't be texting on the phone, or be sleep deprived when driving.

You can be gainfully employed and meet your social responsibilities while having a beer or two on a Friday evening, as the majority of people are able to do.

I've never heard of this myth about the alcohol evaporating during dinner, so I won't comment on that - when I drink alcohol, I do so because I intend to consume said alcohol.

As for the potential for addictiveness, there are many things in life that certain people are not able to handle well, with ruinous effects on those people's lives. Unhealthy junk food for example, or even something seemingly innocuous like the ability to invest in the stock market. I tend towards the philosophy that we should not have the government ban those things, especially when the vast majority of people are able to enjoy those things responsibly. Certainly we can provide additional resources as a society to help those people, but lets not ban it for everyone else.

> Then there's the myth that in dinner it 'evaporates' (TL;DR it does not in a meaningful way)

I'm going to take exception on this one. Alcohol acts as an _amazing_ pan deglazer and general solvent without any real substitute to carry flavors and aromas out of the pan and into the final dish. You don't even need much, maybe 2 tablespoons of wine get fond unstuck and dissolved. Some of it _does_ evaporate, you can literally watch it happen as it reduces in volume. You can flash evaporate a tablespoon of wine and return to a dry pan if it's hot enough. What it's not going to significantly evaporate out of is adding alcohol to an existing volume of liquid like a red sauce. It'll happen but not in an ideal or useful time frame. But for deglazing, try swapping your deglazing wine with broth, water or even vinegar and it's easy to see, smell, and taste that they are not functionally equivalent, an alcohol does the job so much better.

Now, if you or someone in your home has a problem with alcohol addiction or your religion forbids it, I'm not going to tell you to change your ways but for the average home cook (even a nondrinker) a bottle of wine kept next to the stove strictly for cooking purposes is an undeniably valuable tool.

You sound like you'd be a lot of fun at parties

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