drink to health.

Is one drink a day really healthier?( Safe to drink.)


Drink to health.,There’s a real buzz in the air at the moment, don’t you think? I love how the Rugby World Cup has created a party atmosphere all over the country.


I was at the opening ceremony and first game, and am really looking forward to getting along to some more of the games. I hope the All Blacks are eating for tip-top condition and performance right now, so they can once again take away that trophy!


One way, we all know, to be at our best is to moderate the amount of alcohol we consume. You may have caught the news last week that women who drink ‘one drink a day’ are healthier than women who don’t drink at all. US researchers studied over 121,000 nurses enrolled in the US Nurses' Health Study which started in 1976. They compared the drinking habits of women when middle-aged with their later health status. The research suggests that women who had one standard drink of alcohol a day may be healthier when they are older, than their peers who did not drink at all, who consume more than two drinks a day, or who consume four drinks or more at the one time.


The temptation for the media when research like this is done is often to jump on the headline – “drinking is good for you” – and not worry too much about the detail. As consumers, the message we get from this is that a tipple every day is ‘healthy’. Of course the truth is never quite that simple. Experts here point out that there are some issues with the way this study was done, including the fact that it involves self-reporting on the part of the participants (and don’t most of us under-estimate how much we have of things that aren’t so good for us?) and the fact that ‘confounding factors’ may exist that the researchers didn’t look for. Confounding factors are often a problem in research. What it means is that the differences in health may be due to other differences in lifestyle. In other words, women who have one drink a day may also be more likely to do other things in their diet and lifestyle which could account for their better health.


All that aside, what does this research tell us? First of all, if you’re a woman and you don’t drink at all, it’s probably not worth starting just to get a health benefit. If you are a woman and you do drink, the take home message is that regular small amounts of alcohol in middle age might be good for you. By small, they do mean small: under 15g of alcohol a day, which is just above one ‘standard’ drink: a 150ml glass of wine (measure this out yourself; you might be surprised at how small it is) or one-and-a-half cans of beer. Any more than that, and you undo any potential benefit.


Don’t forget alcohol still packs a hefty kilojoule count, too, so if you drink you need to be aware of the energy it’s adding to your day and compensate elsewhere. Our nutritionists still advise for everyone - men and women – to have at least two alcohol-free days each week, and don’t ‘save up’ and have all your drinks for the week in one night. Binge drinking, even if you don’t drink on any other days, is the least healthy way to drink.