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ALCOHOLIC_AVOIDANCE

                                              February 6, 2007

   What reason might there
   be for a pattern of
   vegetarians being anti-
   alcohol?

   The reason is that vegetarians
   are often vegetarians at least
   in part for health reasons.

   The physical damage from
   going heavy on meat,
   pales compared to the
   damage from going heavy
   on booze.

      The logic is very simple and
      obvious: if large amounts
      are poisonous, maybe small      It is also, at least
      amounts are also, and you       sometimes, wrong:
      should avoid it completely.
                                         It's not unusual for low
         It's obvious to the             doses of a poison to be
         point where you might           beneficial (they jargon
         wonder how anyone can           for this is "hormesis").
         miss it.
                                              It may be that low doses
         Why would anyone                     of meat is in fact better
         ever think to                        than a pure vegetarian
         question why someone                 diet... and it is indeed
         would avoid alcohol?                 often claimed that there's
                                              evidence that moderate
                                              drinking is good for you.

                                                   I've never been persuaded
                                                   by this, though: there's
                                                   data out there that shows
                                                   more heart problems among
                                                   teatotalers than among
                                                   "moderate drinkers", but
                                                   I don't see how the data
                                                   can be any good.
                            ALCOHOL
                                                   As a teatotaler, I can
                                                   attest that you have to
                                                   be a fairly weird person
                                                   to make it out of your
                                                   twenties without drinking
                  (Hey man, I'm                    alcohol.
                  *straight
                  edge*!)                          How do you separate out
                                                   the stress of being
                    Of course, I also              abnormal from the data?
                    guzzle tea at a
                    tremendous rate...
                    (I'm a big
                    teaser.)




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