I always found the de-alcoholization of mouth wash a bit interesting. Seemed to happen a little after big tobacco lawsuits. Almost like they know something and worry about it.

As with coca-cola decreasing bottle sizes (before that was the cool thing to do). We went from 591mL to 500mL. And new smaller cans in addition to the 355mL cans (222mL). Huge promotions on Coke Zero. Decreased the sugar content in the regular product. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/why-coke-is-lowering-its-suga...

There are some pushes to label it as a carcinogen similar to tobacco

Yup and nobody talks about it... or not nearly enough. It kills way more than cigarettes.

Stats seem to say 140K to alcohol and 480k to smoking. Keep in mind that this is with a MASSIVE push to reduce smoking if we party like its 1990 and project current deaths vs the death rate to smoking we had in 1990 we would be seeing over 800k today.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rate-smoking?countr...

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-to...

all clinical data clearly shows that alcohol kills way more than cigarettes. Alcohol drives the rates of most cancers that end up killing people.

Can you back that up a link to said clinical data?

Also food causes heart disease, and cancer.

"Alcohol" and "smoking" are pretty specific terms, in a way that "food" is not. The first two refer to IARC Group 1 carcinogens, specifically.

Could you show me the cancer rates of non-eaters?

It’s probably extremely low, since they don’t tend to live long enough to develop cancer.

I think it's extremely high, since many cancer treatments suppress appetite.

Ah, good point.

Almost zero, naturally Big Food suppresses these kinds of results though. /s

Ultra processed foods, which are a large part of many people’s diets, definitely cause cancer[0].

[0]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37087831/

While not directly what we were talking about, this is also true. :/

Yeah my bad, it originally had a comment on the multiple jokes seeming to mock a valid claim, though I now get that those were mostly in response to the broadness of “food”.

Nah you still make a good point IMO, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of a false dichotomy between “eat as much as you want of whatever you want forever” vs. “never eating again because food is cancer”. The post I responded to did this and I unthinkingly followed their lead for more laughs. It was still funny but thinking more about it as well is always good.

I agree that alcohol increases cancer but can you find any statistics of the increase of each cancer vs. non-drinkers? Like “cancer X is 1% for non-drinkers and 3% for drinkers” but I can never find this.

It’s not all cancers it’s specific cancers. Cancers aren’t monolithic: each type has different characteristics and risk factors, aka “Cancer is cancers not just a cancer.”

> Drinking about 3.5 drinks a day doubles or even triples your risk of developing cancer of the mouth, pharynx, larynx and esophagus. Drinking about 3.5 drinks a day increases your risk of developing colorectal cancer and breast cancer by 1.5 times. The less alcohol you drink, the lower your cancer risk.

https://cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/reduce-your-risk/lim....

> Nearly 4% of cancers diagnosed worldwide in 2020 can be attributed to alcohol consumption, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States alone, about 75,000 cancer cases and 19,000 cancer deaths are estimated to be linked to alcohol each year.

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2023....

Most of the research is linked to specific types of cancers and alchohol: oropharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum and breast cancer. Others, like skin cancers, pancreatic and prostate are in the “probably” category.

One of the reasons for cancers in the oral & oropharynx region could be local acetaldehyde production after drinking: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7383267/

Potentially that could be mitigated by acetaldehyde decomposing supplements, like Kislip or Acetium lozenges - supposedly they reduce ACH by up to 90%.

That’s extremely interesting I had no idea! Thank you.

ZBiotics produces a probiotic that is a genetically modified bacteria that breaks down acetaldehyde. My wife is a biochemist and she says the science isn't totally bullshit. The reviews of it are mixed, but personally I have found it to be quite effective at reducing hangovers.

https://zbiotics.com/

19000 cancer death linked to alkohol means your chances to be killed in road accident in US is x2 higher than to die from that type of cancer.

Is that more a commentary on what a meat grinder driving actually is rather than an argument against working to mitigate cancer risk?

The point is that it is unlikely someone will get alcohol related cancer.

My anecdata is that people who has alcohol addiction are dying earlier, but not from cancer. Main causes of deaths are liver failures and drunk accidents(like freezing to death in winter or DUI).

Well that’s certainly true. I’ve seen quite a few people mess their lives up or take an early check out because of the sauce in my time.

But my understanding was that it has been difficult to directly link cancer and alcohol consumption causatively and it’s only been recent genetic research that’s opening up just how many cases are actually related.

This study made the number go from 750k to more than 3 million globally, and as research improves I imagine that number will continue to grow.

So, perhaps we shouldn’t so readily discount the link on the basis of its number of cases since we are only starting to have the science we need and the studies based on that science to create effective studies that aren’t based on correlative evidence.

https://www.ndph.ox.ac.uk/news/new-genetic-study-confirms-th...

Yes, road safety is a serious health problem.

But if it's twice as hard to mitigate, that implies we should spend some effort on reducing alcohol deaths too.

Actually it is easy to mitigate if you have political will.

Vision zero is a common approach which is working in EU.

Or laws could be appended with requirements to install extra technical measures to the cars to prevent driving under influence and speeding.

It is unclear for me why there is no hard speed limit installed into the cars, like 140km/h.

19,000 is nothing! I thought the risk would be significantly higher.