I noticed today, with interest, that Health Canada 'has embraced' the new guidelines from the National Alcohol Strategy Advisory Committee low risk guidelines for alcohol intake, (released Friday) two glasses a day for women, three for men.
I have a vested interest, I like to drink wine, and I've been studying the Prohibition Era (in Montreal) for a play I am writing, Milk and Water. (I tend to drink my wine out of large heirloom crystal glasses once intended only for water, because the wine glasses in that collection are SO TINY:) But hey.
(Coincidentally, another headline today says the Mayor of Vancouver has joined with 3 ex Mayors to promote the legalization of marijuana to end gang warfare.)
Lately some health bodies out there have suggested women should drink NO ALCOHOL AT ALL because it raises breast cancer risk significantly. So I am happy to see I am allowed two glasses here. whatever the size.
I humbly suggest that to lessen breast cancer risk, just give up meat. At least beef and pork. I think the science is pretty clear on that. Indeed, most older women I know avoid those meats.)
Now a few weeks ago, I went for a mammogram and the technician asked me some questions as to risk. Any relations die of the disease, etc. She didn't ask about my alcohol intake so I volunteered the information and told her I like to drink wine. She asked. "So what? "It's increases cancer risk, "I replied. "Well, it's good for other things," she then said.
Smart lady. (Except now they are saying these mammograms are bad for your health. YIKES!)
Anyway, these guidelines seem pretty common sense. (And considering the cost of wine in Quebec, they contain good advice for the pocket book.)
Now, the Queen Mother would not have agreed. She reportedly drank much much more than 2 glasses a day and lived to 102. (They again she did get breast cancer.) My own British grandmother also drank buckets of gin, but she only lived to 76. Of course, she was a prisoner of war in Singapore in 1942 and starved and tortured almost to death at that time.
My son's girlfriend's grandmother is 92. She still lives alone and drives a car and plays competitive bridge (and likes to clean her son in law's home once a week for something to do )and she also drinks wine. Occasionally, like at family parties, she drinks too much wine, like a bottle or so.
This lady, however, is not on one pharmaceutical drug. She was prescribed painkillers a while back because she hurt her leg golfing, but refused to take them as they made her feel funny.
The fact is, the drugs we routinely are prescribed and take are much worse for our liver than alcohol. I mean read the contraindications on those shiny folded up pieces of paper inside the box on even the most innocuous over-the-counter product. MIGHT CAUSE LIVER DAMAGE and just about every other condition. (Of course the print on these warnings is too small for us older folks to read.)
And there's evidence that taking pharmaceuticals and alcohol together further taxes the liver. Even just your common painkillers.
The new National Alcohol Advisory Strategy guidelines avoid this point....that we are a pill popping nation and that almost everyone over forty with medical insurance has been prescribed something.
Anyway, I have just read the Coderre Report from 1927 Montreal, where the police force is condemned for turning a blind eye to clubs that remain open after 12 - and, according to the report, it's after midnight when all the nasty stuff takes place. ("Good" people go to bed by 12, I guess. They have jobs to do to next day. I imagine, that's the thinking.)
Now Montreal was not dry in 1927. And the drinking of liquor isn't condemned in the report as such. Judge Coderre is French Canadian and not a Presbyterian, after all.
It's the stuff around the drinking of alcohol, the SEX mostly, and the gambling, that disturbs the judge. (Hmm. He's a bit like a Presbyterian.)
They didn't worry about health back then, too much. Or health costs as they didn't have medicare. It was all about MORALITY. And about protecting the children, the FEMALE children, especially.
In the US, as the recent PBS documentary revealed, Prohibition was largely about morality and race hatred. And gender bias, too. It was men and the immigrants who liked to drink the most and immigrants were shady people with shady morals and shady family practices. (They all slept in one room, didn't they?) And men, well, they were whoring pigs. (Little old white ladies with their tonics didn't figure, somehow, as an alcohol issue.)
In Montreal they didn't care about the Italian or Greek making his home made wine, but in the US they certainly did. Although they worried most about the Blacks.
It was about race and class back then, and it still is today. These guidelines seemed aimed at the Middle Class, don't they? Middle class women drinking to much, cause we're bored and lonely and stressed out from work. Just like our great (or great great) grandmothers who liked their opiate-laced tonics.
Yes, women of the middle class drink a lot these days, young and old, and it's not condemned or discouraged (as long as it is in moderation.) On today's popular sitcoms the heavy-drinking girls who sleep around are the 'heroines' of the piece, a la Bridget Jones.
(Sadly, I've read that college girls, worried about their weight, are fasting so that they can drink at parties without gaining too much weight.)
But middle class women don't as a rule drink while pregnant. (Even on the sitcoms these party girls stop drinking as soon as they are knocked up. They get knocked up to forward the plot, not because they practiced careless sex.) And that's the real issue, I think, with women and drinking. Fetal Alcohol syndrome. Our prisons are full of men so afflicted. And that certainly is a class thing.
It's funny, Mediterranean food is full of liver detoxifying elements. Pestos and Greek Salads, for instance, contain those oils and phytochemicals that cleanse the liver and kidneys. (I wonder if you can drink all you want of dandelion wine? :)
So that's what I do. Detox with delicious foods while drinking wine. Curry. Curry. Curry. And I try to stay off the prescription and non prescription drugs. Except for coffee, which reportedly protects from cirohssis of the liver. (Where does the "h" go in that word?)
And these new guidelines do indeed recommend eating while drinking. So I agree with them. Because it suits me to.
