Dry January: How much alcohol is actually unhealthy?

In January, many people join the growing global “Dry January” movement by trying to give up alcoholic beverages for a month. If you ask a nutritionist, a toxicologist, and the World Health Organization, the health benefits are clear. However, their recommendations for healthy alcohol consumption vary.

“Alcohol consumption is so controversial because it is so tied to society,” writes award-winning British epidemiologist and nutritionist Tim Spector (65) in his book “Food for Life,” published in 2023. What he means by this: If alcohol hadn’t been around for so long, it would definitely be classified as an illegal drug.

Its harmful consequences are known: “The more alcohol consumed, the greater the risk of contracting almost all diseases.”

The only thing Spector finds positive is red wine. The reason for this lies in the polyphenols it contains. These are secondary plant substances found mainly in fruit peels, including grape skins. Because the skins are not fermented when making white wine, it contains significantly less polyphenols than red wine.

This has health implications. Because polyphenols have anti-inflammatory and blood pressure lowering effects. Spector writes that fresh grapes are healthier than red wine. But: “A small glass three times a week is harmless.”

Carsten Schleh (46), toxicologist from Germany and author of “Be careful, there is poison in it!”, published in 2021. He is the author of the book. “Alcohol is the most destructive of drugs,” he tells Blick. There is no other substance we consume in the same amount that is equally toxic.

Regarding the Federal Office of Public Health’s guidelines on moderate alcohol consumption – no more than two glasses of alcohol per day for men and no more than one glass of alcohol for women, due to the anatomically low body fluid content – he says: “These are socially accepted values. “From a toxicological perspective, this consumption already poses a long-term health risk.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) summarizes this more clearly than Schleh. At the beginning of 2023, he published a report in the international journal “The Lancet”, where he examined the effects of alcohol consumption more closely. He leaves no room for doubt: “There is no consumption of alcohol that is safe for health.” According to the World Health Organization, any amount of alcohol consumption is too much.

It is not for nothing that alcohol is one of the group 1 carcinogens, that is, one of the highest risk group among cancer-causing substances. Accordingly, it is as carcinogenic as alcohol, asbestos, radiation or tobacco. The health authority points out in the report: “The latest available data show that half of the cases of alcohol-related cancer in the WHO European Region are caused by light to moderate alcohol consumption.”

More than 200 million people in Europe alone are at risk of alcohol-related cancer.