Does moderate alcohol consumption benefit health?
To answer this question one needs to consider the age of a person. Young people (and indeed society as a whole) will see non physiological benefits from staying away from alcohol as it can often explain the high number of alcohol-related accidents, a lot of which are fatal and violence in young drinkers. Young women specifically may increase the risk for breast cancer with regular alcohol consumption as even one drink per day may increase the risk of breast cancer by as much as 10 % and has virtually no heart health benefits in this age. People above the age of 60 on the other hand appear to benefit from one or two units of alcohol per day as their risk of heart disease is reduced by these levels of alcohol consumption. Wine (red and white) and beer in particular are believed to contain health promoting substances which lead to these lower risks for heart disease in older people. Yet the amounts of these micronutrients in comparison to other foods such as fruit and vegetables and other
