The Alcohol War Gets Ugly: Academics, Industry, and a Controversial Report.
Plus, a fight over low alcohol labelling
A roundup of things I found interesting this week, from counterproductive recommendations from the WHO, to squabbling over the ICCPUD report.
From the Department of Shooting Yourself in the Foot
The EU is discussing whether reduced-alcohol wines (under 6% abv) can legally be called ‘low alcohol wines’. Almost everybody agrees this is fine, with the exception of the Belgian Federal Public Health Service, which thinks “low alcohol” is a deceptive term that sets a “dangerous precedent”.
“So far, the use of ‘low’ is strictly linked to a presumed health benefit: ‘low salt’, ‘low fat’ or ‘low sugars’,” said the department. “Applying the same label to wine containing up to 6% alcohol, without a threshold ensuring a health benefit, breaks with that approach entirely.”
Carina Ferreira-Borges, the head of the alcohol unit at the WHO office in Copenhagen, was quick to agree.
“Such a qualifier risks misleading consumers, creating a false sense of safety, and undermining years of public health progress,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
“For example, most beers contain 5% alcohol and yet we do not say ‘low-alcohol beer’. Why would different rules apply for different drinks?”
Well, because ‘low alcohol’ when applied to wine means significantly lower-than-normal alcohol, whereas 5% abv for beer is standard.
You think she’d be pleased — the WHO and Ferreira-Borges have repeatedly said that “less is safer” when it comes to drinking.
“The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is — or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is,” she said in the famous “no safe level” statement.
The influential Institute of Alcohol Studies in London (founded by the UK Temperance Alliance) has written multiple times of the need to incentivise producers to lower the alcohol content, by hitting them with nightmarishly complex taxes.
OK, so now they have lowered the level. How are they supposed to signal that to consumers who want to follow the “less is better” guidance?
Here’s a thought: why not write ‘low alcohol’ on the label?
The ICCPUD vs NASEM turf war
As I reported in Drinks Insider last week, the Trump administration has moved to defund a federal committee called ICCPUD and bury its controversial Alcohol Intake and Health report.
This was one of two reports on alcohol that were meant to inform the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The other report is from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM).
When Vox broke the story that the report has been buried (not yet confirmed), they accepted without question it was because of industry interference, and noted that author Tim Naimi had been attacked as a “new prohibitionist”. Of course, they never stopped to consider whether Naimi actually is a new prohibitionist or not.
The “alcohol industry interference” message has now spread from media outlets to the blog posts of anti-alcohol groups.
“By pushing HHS to kill the Alcohol Intake & Health study, Big Alcohol may have won a battle it will regret ever fighting,” wrote Alcohol Justice on LinkedIn.
As for the NASEM report:
“This report is heavily influenced by alcohol industry interests, riddled with conflicts of interest, and has serious scientific flaws,” wrote Movendi. “Consequently, independent public health experts are heavily criticising the NASEM report.”
Ah yes, let’s have a look at those criticisms by “independent public health experts”.
The first cab off the rank was an article in an academic journal, co-authored by Prof Tim Stockwell, a colleague of Naimi, and called “The US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Were Economical With the Truth About Alcohol and Health”.
Another paper critical of the NASEM report was published in The Lancet Regional Health that same month, written by… the ICCPUD report authors.
A few days later came another post attacking the NASEM report, this time on the website of the Institute of Alcohol Studies. This one was also co-authored by Tim Stockwell. Who, by the way, was an official reviewer of the NASEM report — which is not disclosed in either of his articles.
In other words, it looks like the ICCPUD authors and their colleagues did their best to discredit the rival report, using every channel they could.
The more I report on the anti-alcohol people, the more convinced I am that a lot of the drama comes from thin-skinned academics defending their turf.
(By the way, if you want to know how the NASEM report was put together, you can read my interview with Prof Ned Calonge. None of the other major media outlets seem to have spoken to him.)
None of this solves the mystery of why the ICCPUD report vanished. Could it have been because of alcohol industry interference? I know from reporting on this issue that the alcohol lobby in the US is well funded and highly reactive.
(I realised how wealthy the spirits industry was the day an executive handed me a document printed in colour. A wine person would have emailed me a pdf, and if they felt the need to print it, it would have been in black ink. On toilet paper.)
The alcohol industry might well have convinced various members of Congress to stop the ICCPUD report. Or politicians could have done it themselves, particularly if they represent districts that produce alcohol. Or because they were libertarians offended by nanny state policies.
Or maybe this capricious administration just decided to save money on graphic design and publishing. Who knows?
The point being, evidence is needed. If Big Alcohol did kill ICCPUD, those throwing the accusations should supply the hard evidence.
Receipts or it didn’t happen.
Alcohol in a war zone
On a long-haul flight this week, I read Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory, a study of how WWI reshaped literature.
One fascinating detail was that the men trapped in the mud of France had access to a fast postal service. Their wives could order parcels from stores in London, which would arrive two days later. Soldiers begged for socks, pliers, you name it, but also cakes and even crates of wine.
People came up with ingenious ways to keep the thieves away. F.E. Smith got his wife to protect his loot by telling her to print special labels to slap on the box:
ARMY TEMPERANCE SOCIETY PUBLICATION SERIES 9
It’s said there are no atheists in a foxhole. Apparently there aren’t many teetotallers, either.
Public service announcement
In my wander through public health literature this week, I found a paper that isn’t about alcohol, but which might be helpful to somebody.
A new study from Beth Israel Deaconess found that two-thirds of colonoscopy patients admitted they use their phones on the toilet. The top activities? Reading the news (54%) and scrolling social media (44%).
The study also discovered the longer you sit, the higher your odds of haemorrhoids.
When I lived in Sydney, the local Catholic school was named for St Fiacre — a seventh-century Irish monk who, I discovered, is the patron saint of haemorrhoid sufferers.
If you can’t put the phone down, at least send him a prayer.