It’s my understanding that the decrease in recent years is smaller than the article implies and primarily is driven by young persons under age 35, as pictured below. This group didn’t grow up in the Reagan-era/DARE war on drugs culture with drugs = bad, alcohol = not drugs. Instead persons under 35 were nearly twice as likely to say drinking in moderation is bad for health as persons over 35, as pictured in the 2nd graphic. Alcohol has been partially replaced by things like marijuana and vaping, which are perceived as healthier and in some cases cooler.
The argument(s) against the “Blue Zone” narrative or myth is that “Blue Zone” residents live longer because of other reasons, such as genetics, poor record keeping (e.g., non-existent birth certificates, corrupted data, etc.) of the country, lifestyle differences, calorie restriction, and/or today’s society has changed.
I wonder about this too. My husband’s grandfather immigrated from Italy. He grew his own grapes here and made his own wine, which he drank a glass of with dinner every night. He lived to 99 despite working most of his adult life in a foundry and smoking like a chimney into his 90’s. His grandmother (the wife) also lived to 99. They ate plenty of fried chicken cutlets in their time (no one made them like Mary).
6 Likes
@CollegeNerd67 sounds similar to my paternal grandfather! He came over from Sardinia and worked first in coal mines for many years then also worked in a foundry until he retired. He did end up with Black Lung/emphysema, and died at age 87, so still a fairly long life given his lifetime of working in those conditions. However, he was the only one of his seven siblings to come to the U.S. All of his siblings in Sardinia lived until their late 90s, early 100s.
My father will be 90 in May. He drinks at least one glass of red wine every day, if not more.
6 Likes
My parents both died recently. Dad was 95 and mom just shy of 94. Mom was a strict teetotaler and dad enjoyed a glass of two of whatever socially. Both died of cancer of who knows how long they’d have lived?
4 Likes
Many people with non-optimal health habits live a long time. I recall reading an interview with the oldest person in the world at the time, who was 114. He claimed one of the secrets to his longevity was smoking regularly. He smoked regularly without developing cancer or any other terminal illness. However, that doesn’t mean smoking won’t negatively impact your health. Many others die prematurely from smoking related effects. Smoking impacts different people differently, but the overall average impact is negative, including with smoking non-large amounts. It’s a similar idea with alcohol. Some persons drink regularly and live a long life in as good health as can be expected for their age. However, that doesn’t alcohol won’t negatively impact your health.
Past studies that suggested health benefits from drinking a small amount of alcohol have been largely discredited due to inadequate controls. Completely abstaining from alcohol is correlated with various negative pre existing health conditions, so it can give the appearance of persons who drink slightly more than 0 having better longevity than those who completely abstain, if not controlling for those negative health conditions.
I decided to check how many cases of non-alcoholic beer we’ve sold YTD.
We currently carry 19 different non-alcoholic beers and we’ve sold 44,932 case equivalents, up 61.9% vs. the same time period last year. The N/A segment is growing at a good clip.
2024 = 44,932 CEs
2023 = 27,755 CEs(YTD) & 31,406 CEs Jan-Dec
2022 = 13,449 CEs
2021 = 7,279 CEs
Currently non-alc beer sales account for 0.6% of our overall business.
3 Likes
This is me. Since January of 2023, I’ve probably had a total of 10 drinks. I was never more than a lowkey social drinker anyway, but once I stopped almost totally and saw the benefits, I don’t think I’ll ever go back. It just usually isn’t worth the crappy night of sleep that will likely follow.
1 Like
I think it’s fine to live a long life if one is mostly in ok healthy and happy. If one is miserable and/or really no longer recognizes anyone, prolonging life just because it can be done becomes more questionable.
4 Likes
Personally, I never saw the appeal of alcohol. It tastes like old socks. “But it’s an acquired taste.” So if I keep sucking on old socks over time, I’ll develop a taste for it, right? I’m good with unsweetened bubbly drinks 
2 Likes
LEO son doesn’t drink that often because he is extremely fitness focused and is careful with his cheat calories. That said, while he and his girlfriend were in Paris they had what they described as an amazing Rosé at a cafe in the Latin Quarter. He couldn’t find it anywhere in his state, so he texted me a picture and asked if I could track a few bottles down for him. Well, in my line of work I have a lot of reach. Today I had a case dropped off at my office. Apparently they were right, it’s considered a VERY GOOD wine according to my wine guy. I plan to give the case to his girlfriend as a Christmas present.
“This is a wonderful, demi-sec, or semi-sweet, sparkling rosé from one of France’s great winemakers. Made from Gamay, it shows remarkable purity of flavour and perfect balance of sweetness and lightness. Aromatically is shows off ripe pomegranate, blueberry, wild strawberry, and tart red raspberry. It’s zesty, fresh and incredibly easy to drink.”
10 Likes
I asked my ds (age 27, so a cusper between millennial and Gen-Z) about this.
He said going sober-ish is not a thing for his personal friend group. He believes the trend to be more of a true Gen Z thing.
Anecdote/n = 1
3 Likes
I do like the way they orient the bottles in this case of Rosé. It will look less like a case of wine once I wrap it for Christmas. 
8 Likes
I did the same with our son and his wife (27/26) who are visiting currently. Neither have heard of this and don’t plan to give up enjoying occasional wine and cocktails with their friend groups. (Son: Seriously? You’re talking about alcohol in a can, right? Because people need to cut back to zero on that stuff.)
2 Likes
My early 30’s S does not drink. He recognized that he has issues with controlling the amount he drinks, so it’s easier for him to simply not drink. He was raised to be cognizant of how he handles alcohol, since the alcoholism gene is strong in our family (one of my younger brothers also chooses not to drink for the same reason my S does).
I do enjoy a good dry red wine, and I like a beer here & there. Overall, though, I don’t drink much. I drank a glass of wine pretty much every night the last year or so before I quit my last job … I lost a bunch of weight quickly once I quit, and I figure it was the combination of less alcohol and less stress.
1 Like
I found the article weak.
I’ve never been much of a drinker but when menopause hit I noticed it really impacted my sleep. I will have an occasional glass of wine and I usually ask for a nice bottle of wine for my birthday from my son and DIL. If I’m at a nice restaurant I will sometimes order a cocktail but rarely finish it. That is how I’ve always been. I have a group of women I’ve had dinner with monthly for 30 years. We used to go through multiple bottles of wine but now don’t even finish one. There has never been a discussion of drinking less it just slowly evolved.
My husband is pretty healthy but he will drink on the weekend.
My kids and their partners are ages 30-39. 3 of the 6 don’t drink at all. Of the other 3 one is a beer drinker who is drinking less due to being on a medication that is hard on the liver. The other two love craft cocktails and love wine. They belong to a winery wine club that they enjoy going to with friends. One of the non drinking kids will consume edibles when she has a migraine.
When my daughter had a vacation to my house with 4 girlfriends they left a lot of alcohol and mixers. My daughter said each had their favorite drink.
3 Likes
I have seen statistics somewhere to the effect that the difference in life expectancy between the life of a moderate drinker and that of a teetotaler is something like two months - months at the end of a life not otherwise graced by the civilizing pleasures of a good tipple with good friends. No thanks. Bartender, just one more, please.
3 Likes
I’ve never been a drinker. Maybe two or three times, I drank enough to awaken with a hangover but the most recent event was almost 50 years ago.
No more drinking alone at home to relax at the end of a day for me–now I’ll have a quarter of a gummy. It does the job better, no harm to my liver, etc., and I don’t have to worry about a bottle of wine going bad before I finished it.
I will have a glass of wine when I’m out with family and/or friends who also want an alcoholic drink.
2 Likes
3 Likes
Anyone who ever took a drink because it “was good for you” was drinking for the wrong reason. But the recent studies that corrected the errors in previous ones have in turn been misused to try to beat us all into total abstention. It is one thing to debunk the proposition that moderate drinking is healthy and another to say that it’s unhealthy. You now hear that latter statement made in extreme form all the time, even by health authorities: “Even one drink a week is too much” and “With every drink cells inside you die” - that sort of thing. Behind these sweeping claims lies the fear of our Victorian ancestors that even a single drink starts you on the primrose path to, if not perdition in the biblical sense, then a future of binges and hangovers - that is, the sort of heavy drinking that we don’t need studies to tell us is deleterious to health and happiness. However, there was a funny silence accompanying several such dire warnings found by casual googling: With one exception I found no descriptions of the actual downside of moderate drinking. The exception specified a reduced life expectancy of two months!
By all means, stay off even a drink a day of John Barleycorn if that data scares you or if abstention is for other reasons your preference, but for most of us it’s not a compelling reason but rather a spurious one, really, for making the technically accurate but misleading claim that moderate drinking is bad for you. The real reason? Well, consider H.L. Mencken’s definition of a Puritan as a person haunted by the chilling thought that someone somewhere is having a good time. That can’t be allowed. See newsnationnow.com/health/1-alcoholic-drink-may-shorten-life-research/
3 Likes