Drinking to excess can have dangerous consequences.
The authors of a major study published in the Lancet found that around the world, the more people drink, the more likely they are to develop cancer and the more likely they are to die.
The research caused a stir, since the authors suggested that there is no safe level of alcohol. Journalists around the world quickly picked up that headline and ran with it.
But there is some evidence that a moderate amount of booze (say, one drink per day) can help protect against some health conditions, notably heart disease and diabetes. The lead author of the Lancet study, Max Griswold from the University of Washington, said that doesn't matter because "combined health risks" associated with alcohol increase "with any amount of alcohol."
Others aren't so sure.
"Just because something is unhealthy in large amounts doesn’t mean that we must completely abstain," Professor Aaron Carroll from Indiana University School of Medicine wrote in The New York Times after the study was published.
It's also important to remember that Griswold's finding wasn't based on entirely new research. Instead, his team reviewed nearly 600 previous studies on alcohol for a meta-analysis. Meta-analyses can make it hard to control for accuracy, since different researchers perform studies in dramatically different ways.
Plus, other unmeasured factors could also account for increases in deaths and health problems in drinkers. People who consume alcohol might be stressed, smoke, or have other underlying health issues or genetic differences that make them more likely to develop diseases.
"We could spend lifetimes arguing over where the line is for many people," Carroll wrote. "The truth is we just don’t know."