Cancers linked to alcohol use:
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/diet-physical-...
The American Cancer Society recommends avoiding alcohol consumption at any level.
can you use acetaldehyde to crosslink proteins and polysaccharides to make thermosetting bioplastics? apparently you can use it to crosslink urea, just as you can with formaldehyde
looks like the answer is yes, at least if the polysaccharide is chitosan: https://www.mdpi.com/2313-7673/7/1/10
there isn't enough acetaldehyde in bread and fresh fruit or alcoholics' livers to be a practical source for this purpose, but one traditional acetaldehyde process was catalytic dehydrogenation of ethanol on a copper-based catalyst at 260°–290°, which seems like the kind of thing that john plant might feature on the next episode of primitive technology
This is nonsense advice. Would you take the advice of someone who recommended never driving because any level of driving risks death? That's obviously stupid. Or it should be anyway though I suspect some pendants will try to argue it. If you're one of those people what about never going outside? The sun's deadly rays might give you cancer and there's no safe level of sunlight!!
Risks are about trade-offs. If the American Cancer Society wants to be helpful and actually listened to they need to provide practical actionable advice, not this cop-out.
No cigarettes either. But it's OK to go camping and live in a cloud of smoke for days. I wonder how many cigarettes a day equals being in a big campground with fires everywhere for 2 days is?
https://woods.stanford.edu/news/health-impacts-wildfire-smok....
Air filtration works very well for smoke (and other particulates).
Obviously we are talking about physical addiction, not some cultural nonsense.
And you're right, risks are all about trade-offs and how you implement that advice into your own life is entirely up to you. Crucially, they're not making recommendations to make anyone feel better about their harmful decisions, they're making them to help people make informed decisions.
Also if I go drinking with someone I don't know well, the risk of their becoming violent is quite high.
Alcohol happens to have 10,000 years of cultural tradition behind it. Plus, it pairs well with food.
In what kind of society or social circles is this true? Here it's common to socialize and meet strangers over a drink or two, and the risks of their becoming violent is near zero.
Maybe but it's also much harder to obtain due to being illegal.
> the risk of their becoming violent is quite high.
Jesus who are you going drinking with??? That's not normal.
> On average, roughly 100% of inmates who are incarcerated for violent offences have two arms.
Arghhh! Quick, cut one of everyone's arms off!
Like someone here writes, correlation does not imply causation, but correlation is evidence of causation, and that is a strong correlation. Specifically, if the person you picked is under the influence, he or she is 10.4 times more likely to be engaging in an act of violence than if he or she is not.
"Randomized placebo-controlled study of the benefits of personal mobility", Stravro and Chunk, 1999.
Have those made-up sources included externalities, from air and noise pollution, to city planning, commutes, lifestyle changes - include pressure and stress added to the individual by the extra speed of going places?
Have they asked those pesky "walk and/or take the public transport" Europeans living in suitable cities, if they prefer their way?
I feel like the medical community is slowly starting to finally realize that they can't force patients to minmax their lives. Why would I live a long life that isn't enjoyable?
I mean, they are very different, unless you have the will of a wet noodle.
When the ACS recommends avoiding alcohol consumption at any level, they don't think people are actually going to suddenly quit drinking. They're just trying to convince that guy who drinks two six-packs a night to cut down to one six-pack a night.
A friend of mine wouldn’t eat non-organic blueberries because he heard they suck up tons of pesticides so ate more eggs and sausage instead for breakfast.
Is the magnitude of health benefit of going from 2 drinks a day to 1 drink a day equivalent to or 1/20th the benefit of an average American walking an additional 20 minutes per day?
I don’t have the source with me now but I read that in my example above, it would save about 650 lives a year compared to 175k+ due to overall alcohol use.
One stereotype I’ve heard is that people quit drinking and then become addicted to coffee. Coffee apparently can have acetaldehyde in it.
I wonder more about soluble fiber carbohydrates leading to ethanol production in the gut.
It also could be the ritual of the whole thing. I quit drinking, and got really into coffee drinks. Creating potions—the anticipation, the combination of fluids with different densities and colors, the foam that is produced by espresso when the pressure is just right—it is all kind of satisfying.