For a generation, moderate drinking enjoyed a medical alibi. A glass of red was practically a statin. That story has been coming apart for years, as better studies stripped out the ‘sick quitters’ who inflated the benefits of abstinence comparisons. What remains is simpler, and ruder: alcohol is a carcinogen, risk rises with dose, and the heart-health halo was always thinner than the dinner-party conversation around it.
Chief medical officers have already tried to say this with the 14-unit week. The next revision, now circulating among advisers, is expected to sound less like a bargain and more like a warning, especially on cancer of the breast, mouth and bowel.
This will be unpopular, which is not the same as unfair. People can still choose a drink. They should not be sold a health claim with it. The wine industry will talk about Mediterranean patterns and conviviality. Conviviality does not require a second bottle.
I am not arguing for prohibition, or for pretending that a pint after a funeral is a public health event. I am arguing for an end to the pretence that we drink for our arteries. We drink because we like it. Honesty is the first nutrition intervention.
If the new guidelines make a modest drinker pause on a Tuesday, they will have done more than another pyramid on a cereal box.