Every time you read in a newspaper that ‘moderate alcohol intake’ is associated with some improved health outcome—less heart disease, less obesity, anything—to gales of delight from the alcohol industry, and of course from your friends, who say, ‘Ooh well, you see, it’s better for me to drink a little…’ as they drink a lot—you are almost certainly witnessing a journalist of limited intellect, overinterpreting a study with huge confounding variables.

This is because, let’s be honest here: teetotallers are abnormal. They’re not like everyone else. They will almost certainly have a reason for not drinking, and it might be moral, or cultural, or perhaps even medical, but there’s a serious risk that whatever is causing them to be teetotal might also have other effects on their health, confusing the relationship between their drinking habits and their health outcomes. Like what? Well, perhaps people from specific ethnic groups who are teetotal are also more likely to be obese, so they are less healthy. Perhaps people who deny themselves the indulgence of alcohol are more likely to indulge in chocolate and chips. Perhaps preexisting ill health will force you to give up alcohol, and that’s skewing the figures, making teetotallers look unhealthier than moderate drinkers. Perhaps these teetotallers are recovering alcoholics: among the people I know, they’re the ones who are most likely to be absolute teetotallers, and they’re also more likely to be fat, from all those years of heavy alcohol abuse. Perhaps some of the people who say they are teetotal are just lying.