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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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I recall reading a wine morbidity metastudy 15ish years ago. The results were astounding. Controlling for all relevant variables (age, income, race, sex, etc), the people who drank the most wine were the least likely to die. Really excessive wine drinkers beat regular wine enjoyers beat tea-totalers.

The study had a warning that they are not advocating drinking two bottles of wine a day. Sure, all evidence they could analyze shows that is peak human performance, but please don't.

And now more recently we have the ice cream study. Either the truths of human nutrition and health are rather counterintuitive, or health and nutrition science are largely shit. Replication crisis as academic disciplines.

wine morbidity metastudy

I went searching and found this other one right off the bat.

Results: This systematic review included 25 studies, of which the meta-analysis included 22 studies. The pooled RR for the association of wine consumption and the risk of CHD using the DerSimonian and Laird approach was 0.76 (95% CIs: 0.69, 0.84), for the risk of CVD was 0.83 (95% CIs: 0.70, 0.98), and for the risk of cardiovascular mortality was 0.73 (95% CIs: 0.59, 0.90)

And yes, a risk ratio below one does mean an inverse relationship -- that is, more wine less risk.

But WHO has spoken.

I recall reading a wine morbidity metastudy 15ish years ago. The results were astounding. Controlling for all relevant variables (age, income, race, sex, etc), the people who drank the most wine were the least likely to die. Really excessive wine drinkers beat regular wine enjoyers beat tea-totalers.

Any chance you could find it again? I'd love to read it.

or health and nutrition science is largely shit.

This is definitely it. Nutrition science since 1970 has been a disaster for the human race. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-as-obese?tab=chart&country=~USA

Smoking is bad for you. It's completely obvious in the data. Moderate drinking is not bad for you in the same way. Some studies say it is. Some say it isn't. Whatever the result, the effect size is SMALL.

Why does the British medical establishment even care about moderate drinking at all while their citizens are eating themselves to death? My conclusion: they're losers.