Alcohol

Misconceptions

“Health benefits”

There was a buzz years ago about the health benefits of drinking red wine. There is a type of antioxidant called resveratrol¹ that comes from red grape skins. Hence, studies claimed that red wine can help with maintaining a healthy heart as there are small amounts of resveratrol in it.

Even before red wine became famed for its “health benefits”, there was another alcoholic drink in Asia that promoted good health by drinking a glass a day. Yomeishu, from Japan, makes that claim even up to today. The reason is that Yomeishu contains chinese medical herbs in the drink and these herbs are able to improve various symptoms.

The curious thing about these claims is that it begs the question why Yomeishu is not a regular herbal drink instead of an alcoholic one as all the health benefits of drinking it are derived from the herbs themselves. The same goes for red wine: Why drink red wine when I can get the same health benefits by eating grapes themselves? Eating grapes have even more benefits than drinking wine as they contain fibre which is very important for our gut health. Can it be that its easier to sell their products by getting the customers addicted to the alcohol content in these drinks? It is all speculation but there is nothing stopping these companies from manipulating their customers in order to have higher profits. This should not be surprising as capitalism has a very strong grip on modern societies.

“Academic studies”

There may be some research papers done on the health benefits for red wine but nothing for Yomeishu. However, this Harvard article² states that red wine can only claim to have associations to good health, not causation.

This is a very important differentiation because associations can be manipulated to lay claims to many things that are very ludicrous. This is why researchers are always trying to looking for causations instead of associations. Causations refer to the data showing them as direct reasons for a phenomenon happening.

Let’s use an example to better understand the difference between associations and causations. One day, you read on the newspaper ‘Eating red meat causes higher rates of vehicular accident deaths!‘ Your first reaction may be shock, surprise or disbelief but it definitely draws your attention. The news report says that studies have found that there is a high occurrence of people dying from vehicular accidents after eating red meat and goes on to give various graphs and statistics from countries around the world. This will make many people believe because there are ‘graphs and statistics’ to back up the claim.

Little do these people know that they have been duped as the interpretation of the data is misleading. Autopsy done on the corpses of accidental deaths will reveal the stomach contents of the victims and it is found that before the accidental death, victims were eating red meat and drinking red wine. Having red wine with red meat like beef is a normal occurrence nowadays, when eating Western cuisines, due to how they complement each other. Therefore, both red meat and red wine have associations with the accidents and interpretation of this data is where a lot of trickeries appear.

Researchers can lay claims that red meat causes vehicular accident deaths because they want to reduce the impact of these studies on red wine. The reason they are doing this is because the studies are sponsored by red wine manufacturers. These manufacturers want to reduce the harm done to the sales of wine so they paid researchers to divert the attention to red meat. This is how you see absurd or intentionally misleading headlines in newspapers like the example given above. Only people who have studied the actual research papers will be able to find the trickeries involved. However, normal people who do not read these research papers will be in awe of the graphs and statistics given and start to believe that red meat causes vehicular accident deaths when in fact it is the red wine that is responsible. Once this happens, it will take an arduously long time to dispel the misconceptions planted in the general public’s minds.

What was described above is exactly what is happening with red wine and Yomeishu. Over years, the news media and advertising kept reiterating that both had “health benefits” and brainwashed the public. Now, there are Buddhists who claim that drinking just one glass of alcohol per day is fine as they still have control over their faculties. Little do they realise that once alcohol releases the inhibitors in the brain, the mildest that can happen is embarrassment while the worst is death.