Americans drink the equivalent of 454 glasses of wine per person every year, and while that may seem like a lot, it breaks down to between one and two glasses of wine per day per person. Alcohol use has been much maligned in the United States in the past, but there is increasing evidence that including a moderate amount of alcohol in your diet may have significant health benefits.
History
Human production and consumption of alcohol predates written history, forcing historians and archaeologists to use evidence found at dig sites to estimate exactly when it began. While humans were probably consuming fermented fruit for millennia before figuring how to purposefully produce alcohol, late Stone Age beer jugs prove that man has been making fermented beverages for at least 12,000 years. Alcohol provided its early producers with an important source of calories, a safe alternative to water that was often contaminated with cholera, dysentery and typhoid, and an integral medium for worship and celebration, says the website Alcohol Problems & Solutions.
Significance
Per capita, Americans consumed the equivalent of 2.18 gallons of pure alcohol in 2000, which represented a 21 percent decrease in U.S. alcohol consumption since 1980, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. College graduates are more likely to drink than high school drop outs, and consumption is associated with higher social class. Slightly more than 30 percent of Americans abstain from alcohol completely.
Types
There are three main types of consumable alcohol: beer, wine and distilled spirits. Beer ingredients can vary, but they traditionally include water, grain, yeast, hops and malt. Historically, beer represented a rich source of nutrition, and may even have predated bread as a staple, but modern beer is too highly filtered to represent a significant source of nutrition. American beers generally have an alcohol content of 3 percent to 7 percent, but some speciality beers contain up to 44 percent alcohol.
Wine is most often made from grapes, but it can be made from a variety of fruits, including berries and peaches. American wines generally contain between 9 percent to 14 percent alcohol.
It's possible to make distilled spirits from almost anything, including rice, grain, potatoes and sugar cane. While the natural fermentation process limits alcohol content to 14 percent, the invention of distillation allowed man to produce spirits with higher alcohol contents. During distillation, an alcoholic liquid is heated until it enters its gaseous form, is captured as steam and then allowed to cool back to liquid form. Some of the water content evaporates during the process, leaving a liquid with a higher alcohol content.
Benefits
While the media often tout the health benefits of wine, studies show that moderate alcohol consumption has health benefits independent of the type of alcohol. The Harvard School of Public Health notes that more than 100 studies have shown that moderate drinking is correlated with 25 to 40 percent lower rates of heart attacks, ischemic strokes, peripheral vascular disease, sudden cardiac death and death from all cardiovascular causes. Moderate alcohol consumption is also associated with higher levels of high-density lipoprotein, or good cholesterol, and increased insulin sensitivity, which may protect drinkers against Type 2 diabetes. While it's unclear exactly how much alcohol is the right amount for your health, the Mayo Clinic recommends no more than two drinks per day for men under age 65, and a single drink per day for women of all ages and men older than 65.
Warning
While moderate alcohol consumption may have health benefits, because of the risks associated with alcohol abuse, physicians do not recommend that non-drinkers begin drinking for the health benefits.
References
- Alcohol Problems and Solutions: History of Alcohol and Drinking around the World
- Alcohol Problems and Solutions: Alcoholic Beverage Consumption in the U.S.: Patterns and Trends
- Types of Alcoholic Beverages
- Harvard School of Public Health: The Nutrition Source
- MayoClinic.com: Alcohol use: Why moderation is key
