this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2026
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People who live longer:
People who drink a glass of wine every night.
People who buy organic and cook whole foods at home.
People who spend 30+ minutes a day being activr/at the gym.
People who get 9+ hours of sleep every night.
People who have less chronic stress.
People who get regular checkups/screenings at the doctor.
So... rich people that have the time and can afford to do all of those things or have them done for them.
The glass of wine is likely due to a selection bias in Tea Total people. Most people who are completely sober, are so either because they are recovering alcoholics, or have other health issues.
Most people who are healthy and have no prior alcoholism issues drink at least occasionaly, which introduces a selection bias favouring people with health issues as strict non drinkers, which causes not drinking at all to be correlated with worse health than drinking occasionally.
Idk... a lot of gen Z people I know just don't drink at all
OP is referring to the j-curve historically seen in studies about drinking. Because researchers didn't control for people who stopped drinking after years of abuse or people who couldn't drink because of other health issues, it looked like having 0 drinks per day led to worse health outcomes than 1-2 drinks per day. Because of that, many health organizations spent decades telling people that 1-2 drinks per day was better for you than 0 drinks per day.
Someone finally controlled for those variables a few years ago, and the j-curve vanished. Most health organizations now say they're is no amount of alcohol that is safe to consume.
So it's got nothing to do with Gen Z drinking habit specifically, and the science has been corrected since. But a lot of people still internalized and parrot the "1-2 drinks is healthy" thing.
i get what you're saying, but what i'm wondering is, while alcohol is bad for your liver and damages your health in that way, it also leads to social occasions and less loneliness, i guess. so you might have psychological improvements; and was that also tested for?
Alcohol on its own does not cause social occasions or reduce loneliness. Plenty of people drink alone, and plenty of people gather socially without drinking.
That said, while the advice from a health standpoint is that no amount of alcohol is completely safe to drink, humans do risky shit all the time for fun or convenience. More people get hurt in car accidents than develop alcohol-related diseases, but no one is stopping driving. The difference in outcomes between people who have zero drinks per day versus 1-2 drinks per day is much less than the difference between 1-2 and 5+ drinks. So occasional/light drinking is still relatively low-risk. It's just not actively good for you as previously thought.
No amount of alcohol is safe? Is that like saying no amount of driving is safe?
Sure. Any driving you do increases your risk of death. But it's likely you need to drive for other reasons that reduce your risk of death (like buying food).
Drinking is different because no one needs to drink.
Haha, ymmv but I find driving to be unnecessary
Yes but this depends significantly on where you live.
For sure, I'm very lucky to live where I do.
Yep.
Yeah but these (usually flawed) studies that have wormed their way into the public consciousness were done long before gen z was drinking age. From up-to-date information it's pretty clear that any amount of any kind of alcohol is quite bad for you. Obviously increasing with quantity.
because they can't afford it. prices are up, incomes are down. Gen Z starting incomes aren't much higher than the start incomes of people from 10-20 year ago, but booze prices are triple what they were, i've actually seen them start to come down recently because well, even older folks can't afford $20 cocktails or $20 four packs of beer. when I was 25 $20 got you a 24 pack of craft beer. or a 48 of the cheap shit.
That might have something to do with it. But gen-z seems to have more a purity culture than millennials and gen-x had.
Many are very into exercise and fitness from a very young age. Control their diets. Sleep super early, get up early.
They are going less to clubs (and shitty dive bars). Doing less drugs. Having less sex.
You can say its all because of money. But broke teenagers and young adults of previous generations had their fun, went out, destroyed their bodies. You know, it can be REALLY cheap to get fucked up and well, get fucked or fuck.
it's not cheap to get fucked up anymore. it's not cheap to go out, all this tracks.
gyms however, are still cheap.
no idea what you are on about purity. i just know a lot of 22 year olds at my work who are broke and live at home. they are 'boring' and 'pure' because they don't have much other choice. they can't afford to party. they'd like to, but when you make 2-3K a month, spending $200 going out on a saturday night at a bar isn't exactly affordable.
sex rates also correlate highly to economic conditions. nobody fucks and has babies when it's economically tough, and when we have good economy there is a baby boom and the marriage rate spikes.
You think people in their late teens and early 20s in the past fucked more cause they thought “ah if I have a kid it’s no issue, I can support them!”?..
Also come on… it is really cheap to get fucked up. There is really cheap booze. Really cheap weed. Really cheap drugs in general really.
And you know, you pre-game, go to a dive bar during live music night or some shit. Meet some new people, make mistakes, make memories you’ll only re-remember at the most inconvenient moments.
Go to a rave. They are really cheap and md has not become anymore expensive throughout the years.
Actually, this is something that the more I think about is true. Drugs are some of the few things that haven’t really increased in price at all.
Getting fucked up is one of the few things you can do as a young person that has DECREASED in comparative cost.
Camping with friends and taking lsd and shrooms, raving and taking md, going to a dive bar and smoking weed… its all CHEAPER now, comparatively.
I don't think it, it's a statistical fact. It's a stat that's tracked for decades across many countries. The numbers don't lie.
All you are doing is arguing anecdotally. The peopel going to raves/clubs are wealthy, and wealthy peopel fuck a lot, sure, but that'snot hte majority of people.
the average person in the usa has 7 partners in a lifetime. a lot of wealthy party kids have like 70. i have over 30 myself, but I understand I'm not normal, and the people I was socializing with when I was in my 20s also were not normal, they were richer than me and had a lot more sex than me. but i understand my anecdotal experience is not what how your average person lives their life.
That's teetotal, nothing to do with the nice hot cuppa
Also last time I saw teetotalers being less healthy than occasional drinkers was decades ago before never drinking became normal among the youth as they came of age
Back then the only reason to not drink was to treat alcoholism or a serious problem. Now people abstain because their friends do
How does wine taste? I really wanna taste wine before I die.
It varies dramatically for different types of wine, even within the broad categories (red, white, rosé, etc.). Some wines are grapier and will be reminiscent of juice you've had. Others are further away from that. Invariably they will taste different if you've never had wine before, even moreso if you've not had alcohol.
If you are interested in wine for the experience, I'd recommend situations where it's well-paired with food. The best wine I've ever drank has been with good food that complemented it.
The crazy thing about wine is that it tastes wiiiiiiiiiiildly different based on the grape and process.
fermentation plays an important role in determining the taste i guess.
A good bottle of wine is only in the $20-$30 range. IMO, every wine I have ever had that costs more than $30 is not any better than wine that is $30. Ive tried quite a bit of different stuff up to $75-$300 bottles that I got for free. None of it was worth more than a $30 bottles, at least to my palette. The one exception probably being Veuve Cliquot champagne, which is really good but costs like $50.
There is a pretty big difference between a $7 bottle of wine and a $30 bottle of wine though. Honestly wine is kind of an acquired taste, and there are a lot of varieties. If you want something good but also cheap then you cant go wrong with a $10 bottle of sweet table wine. Any other kind of wine its worth it to spend for something in the $20-$30 price range if you want it to be decent
I am not American and where I live, wine is illegal (exceptions are there and loopholes too) so it is difficult for me to drink wine in my community and country.
Depends on the wine. I wanted to see for myself so I bought 2 bottles from the same producer. Same type of wine and stuff as well. One bottle was 25-ish€ and the other was 80-ish. I could instantly tell which the more expensive wine was. Then I asked my wife to taste without telling her which is which. She could also instantly tell. Was it worth the price? Fuck no. I usually buy in the 10-15 range from a guy that I trust since supermarket stuff is hit and miss and I like trying new ones, not just buying the same one every time.
I suppose thats kind of what I meant. For sure there are actual differences between a $30 bottle and an $80 bottle, but after $30 it is mostly a game of massively diminishing returns. A $60 bottle of wine is nowhere near as good of a value as two $30 bottles of wine. A $300 bottle is sure as shit nowhere near good enough to be better than the value of 10 $30 bottles
Other than Cliqout, Ive never had a bottle of wine worth over $30 that I would ever pay for myself. Im a big fan of Saldo, which doesnt have hardly any label on it. I figured it would be good wine since its definitely not selling itself with a sexy label lol
I'm lucky to live in France so there's plenty of affordable and good local wine but I'll definitely keep an eye on the import section for that one. Heard good things about Californian wines. So I was already curious but never actually tried any.
Colombia valley wines are better than California wines, IMO.
I had a nepo coworker gloat about spilling $500/bottle champagne in NYC for his birthday party. I said, “why aren’t you drinking that?” Sick.
They are varied. Red wines have more tannins than white, white wines come in different sweetness, with the less sweet ones described as dry
If you wanted to try a red wine I would suggest starting on merlot
I wouldn't recommend drinking an entire bottle in a day. Opened wine can be kept in the fridge for a few days
How do you know if a wine is expired? Will it get insects on it or what?
No insects, the taste will just get worse as it approaches funky