Dan BuettnerBA · journalist, explorer and author; National Geographic Fellow
Yes, in the pattern the blue zones actually drink in: one to two glasses a day, with food or with friends, never saved up for the weekend.
What it rests onObserved drinking patterns in the five regions, plus the older cohort literature showing a J-shaped curve for all-cause mortality.
Source: bluezones.com ↗
Tim StockwellPhD · alcohol epidemiologist and addictions researcher
No. The apparent benefit is an artefact of comparing drinkers against an abstainer group that includes people who quit because they were already ill.
What it rests onSystematic review and meta-analysis correcting for abstainer bias and study quality, in JAMA Network Open, 2023.
Source: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ↗
Buettner is describing older adults in Mediterranean and Okinawan food cultures where alcohol arrives with a meal and with company. Stockwell's meta-analysis covers general adult cohorts, mostly Anglophone, where drinking is not embedded in either. Neither side is talking about the same act.
Both accept that heavy and binge drinking are harmful, and Buettner states explicitly that the pattern cannot be banked: fourteen drinks on a Saturday is not the same thing as one a day.
A cohort with a clean lifetime-abstainer comparison group in a culture where moderate daily drinking with meals is the norm, or a Mendelian randomisation analysis stratified by drinking pattern rather than volume.
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