Well, nitrates plus high heat = bad. Unless you give them time to break down...like 3 months or so. That's why most hams are safe to griddle - they're cured for months and months, so the nitrate breaks down into nitrite, which further breaks down into nitric oxide in the meat.
I think it's actually nitrite that interacts with heat to form nitrosamine, but the nitrates break down into nitrites when exposed to high heat, and also produce other compounds as well.
This is what I tell my friends. So they always take it upon themselves to find the stuff that doesn't.
"This doesn't taste like beer at all!" Right. It tastes exactly like beer. Every fucking time.
"You can barely taste the alcohol in this." Well, it's sugary as shit, so duh. In these cases, I could have the same thing without alcohol and it would probably taste as good or better.
I actually don't like to drink because I have a family history of bad alcohol decisions. I'm still willing to take sips here and there both to appease my mates and to see how much tolerance each has respectively built up to alcoholic flavors.
There a certain level of risk-avoidance that is not crazy. I bike to work in Manhattan every day. People die from that too. A lot more people die from cancer, much of it caused by the ingestion of ethanol.
Alcohol - Putting the cancer thing aside, how can anyone say they don't like drinking because of the taste? That's like saying you don't like meat because of the taste. Which meats? How were they cooked? There are probably tens of thousands of ways to prepare chicken that all taste unique.
So take any fruit liquor that you like the real fruit it was made from, add a SMALL amount to lemonade, DONE. You won't be able to taste any alcohol, yet if you drink a few you will start to feel it.
Not drinking because of health, history, or personal reasons is fine. But saying it TASTES bad? Did someone make you drink straight vodka once? Perhaps a shot of something? Cos I'm inclined to agree, that's not so tasty...
A well made drink is an art form. Balancing the flavours, much like a complex meal. If it tastes bad, your doing it wrong.
A well made drink is an art form. Balancing the flavours, much like a complex meal. If it tastes bad, your doing it wrong.
Ethanol itself is a horrible flavor. If you mix it with other liquids to mask its horrible poisonous flavor, why have it in there in the first place? I once tasted a sip of some apple brandyish concoction at a restaurant when we were at RIT. It was like drinking a warm apple pie. Why put poison in it? You could easily create a drinkable warm apple pie without poison in it. Why not do so? Why choose to put in a poisonous awful tasting chemical when it is not necessary?
Some people do actually like the flavor, and more power to them. To me it tastes like the poison it is.
Some people do actually like the flavor, and more power to them
I've found most people (in the US) have built a tolerance to that alcohol flavor from binge drinking or drinking really terrible beer/liquor when they first started drinking. Their tastes later "refined". I think this is because, once the alcohol flavor can be ignored, the other flavors can be discriminated.
Some people do actually like the flavor, and more power to them. To me it tastes like the poison it is.
Question - Can you provide decent evidence to your claim that Alcohol is as much of a cancer risk as smoking? If you can, please do.
Oh yes.
Basically, the world health organization categorizes carcinogens based on whether they are definitely, probably, possibly, not sure, and probably not carcinogenic. Both alcohol and smoking are in the definitely category. That means there is enough evidence to show a cause and effect relationship.
Also, according to this study alcohol can be attributed to be the cause of 10% of cancers among men and 3% among women. In other words, one out of every ten guys who has cancer got it because of drinking.
If you both smoke AND drink it's even worse. It puts you at a much higher risk of many cancers, specifically laryngeal cancer. So the risk of cancer from doing both is greater than the combined risk of doing each on its own.
How fascinatingly specific, that perfectly and exactly proves That Alcohol is as much of a cancer risk as smoking. Oh, Thank the lord you didn't just point me at a vague section of references, none of which actually provides evidence of the claim, I'd have been very disappointed.
Here's the thing - Scott doesn't like alcohol. Therefore, he is coming up with a reason that alcohol is the worst thing on earth, and everyone else is incredibly foolish for drinking it, and by not drinking it, he is better than them. He's Finding some way to be able to call his uninformed opinion objective fact. However, He does like biking around the place, New York City, and the combination of the two, so he ignores the increased cancer risk and risk of other pulmonary conditions from the pollution, soot, and particulate matter that come with those.
Scott's not a bubble-boy, nor is he really that paranoid about risks, he just doesn't like like alcohol, and therefore everyone who likes it is stupid for drinking poison, and that means that he is better than them, because he likes something he doesn't like.
Here, let me hand it over to John Cleese to explain it better - not that Scott's an extremist in this case, but it's not dissimilar.
Edit - Scott, You missed the point severely. Read very carefully what I said, which was "Can you provide decent evidence to your claim that Alcohol is as much of a cancer risk as smoking?" I'm not arguing the existence of risk, I'm asking about the degree of risk - I mean, you could fall over getting out of bed, smash your head on the floor and die, but that doesn't mean that getting out of bed is therefore just as bad as jumping off a building, though I suppose one could argue that it would be very difficult to jump off a building without getting out of bed. In other words, I'm not disputing that alcohol can lead to a small increase your cancer risk. Just like inhaling a bunch of soot and pollution while you're out biking to work. But I am disputing that it will increase one's cancer risk as much as smoking, until you can provide clear evidence for that claim. Explain it to me like you think I'm stupid, which I'm sure isn't going to be hard, because you'd be totally justified if you thought as much.
Scott, You missed the point severely. Read very carefully what I said, which was "Can you provide decent evidence to your claim that Alcohol is as much of a cancer risk as smoking?"
I just showed the study that says 1 in 10 guys with cancer, at least European Males, got it because of alcohol. 10% of cancer is alcohol cancer. I couldn't find a directly comparable statistic for what percentage of cancers are from smoking. Even if smoking causes more than 10% of all cancers, 10% is still an insanely high risk! What I meant when I said it was just as bad was that they are both in the same class of carcinogen, which is the "definitely bad" category.
If you also read what many sites, such as world health organization, are saying, is that while there is evidence of some possible benefits of drinking alcohol related to heart disease, the evidence and risk level of alcohol causing cancer outweighs that, and not drinking at all is the recommended course of action.
Alcohol helped humanity get to where it is today seeing as it gave us something to drink that didn't have super poisonous bacteria in it in the days before we knew how to get clean water. There is also a great deal of art and culture surrounding it, and it's not going anywhere any time soon.
But if you value your health more than the flavor of a beverage and intoxicating yourself, you won't drink it. I know many people drink, and would never smoke. And their primary reason for not smoking is that it is so poisonous. Considering that alcohol is also poisonous, that is clearly the realm of hypocrisy.
Individuals who drink alcohol in moderation (about one drink a day or less) are 14-25% less likely to develop heart disease compared to those who drink no alcohol at all, finds research led by Professor William Ghali from the University of Calgary, published online in the British Medical Journal.
Heart disease is the #1 killer in America, enjoy your increased risk.
I feel sorry that you must continuously live your life in a binary black and white view. The world is much more beautiful when one understands the nuances of life. There is no virtue in a lengthy, dull life. Life is not maximized by years spent living it.
Err, that 10% is the "risk" that if you have cancer, you got it from drinking. I don't think that's at all what you meant when you used the word "risk", though, so you really need to find some more statistics to make your point...
And their primary reason for not smoking is that it is so poisonous. Considering that alcohol is also poisonous, that is clearly the realm of hypocrisy.
No, because there's a difference between "so poisonous" and "poisonous" - clearly the level of poisonousness matters.
I couldn't find a directly comparable statistic for what percentage of cancers are from smoking.
That's fair, I won't monster you about it being hard to find - I'm having trouble finding exactly how much drinking alcohol increases your risk of cancer, at least in clear numbers, though it's not terribly hard to find those same numbers for smoking. Nor is it terribly easy to find statistics which are purely about alcohol related cancers, rather than just "This many in this many in this vague group" or "This many alcohol related deaths, because of this group of health problems including cancer." Also, most of the statistics I find are also linked to drinking daily, and I doubt most people drink on a daily basis. Hell, half the statistics that indicate a severely elevated risk of cancer would only apply to people who are borderline or outright alcoholics.
The problem I have with your statement is basically thus - It's in the same category, but so is Asbestos, Soot, certain types of estrogen, arsenic, T-cell lymphoma, and of course, X-ray, Gamma, and Neutron radiation. The question is not that they're in the same category, but the amount of exposure over time - A guy who has a few drinks of a Friday after work, or a glass of wine with dinner some nights isn't anywhere near as likely to develop cancer as the guy who is exposed to Asbestos on the same basis, or elevated levels of Neutron radiation for a short period. I mean, sure, if you are a hardcore alco, you might be at equal risk to a pack a day smoker, but how many people out of all the people that drink are serious alcoholics?
You're making a statement that seems to only apply to extreme cases, not the majority of cases. The majority of people who drink do not drink enough to put them in a risk category anywhere near smoking - for example, smoking raises your risk of lung cancer from roughly 1% to about 22%, IIRC. There are less people that smoke than drink, but far more people are killed by smoking related illness than alcohol related illness.
That's why I keep bringing up the soot and pollution you inhale whenever you ride your bike to work - that's in the same category as both alcohol and smoking. But you don't fear the cancer risk there, which I consider - at this point, considering what I've seen and the amounts of alcohol needed to be consumed to cause the levels of risk you're talking about, namely being comparable to smoking - as hypocritical as you consider the people who drink, but would never smoke.
Though,
But if you value your health more than the flavor of a beverage and intoxicating yourself, you won't drink it.
I appreciate your concern, I truly do - after all, we've been communicating on a near daily basis for, what, three years now? Four? I think you'd probably at least be minorly sad if I popped my clogs. Isn't that a strange thought, Scott being a little sad because I dropped off the perch? Some twilight zone shit right there, but anyway - but as we've already established, I smoke, get in fights, eat smoked meats and junk food, drink soda, throw myself out of planes, drive really fast, ride motorbikes, so on, so fourth. I don't think that drinking is the first thing I would cut out, if I had that level of concern about my health.
But if you value your health more than the flavor of a beverage and intoxicating yourself, you won't drink it.
I also wouldn't drink sodas, eat potato chips, fast food or many other things I like to stick to my mouth.
I know many people drink, and would never smoke. And their primary reason for not smoking is that it is so poisonous. Considering that alcohol is also poisonous, that is clearly the realm of hypocrisy.
Churba kinda went there already, let me give my personal opinion. Tobacco (or nicotine in it, to be exact) is highly addictive, lot more than alcohol. So if I would start smoking I would smoke a lot more than I currently drink (once every now and then). Thus my risk of getting cancer would be great deal of higher than the cancer risk from my drinking. Also I don't like the smell of tobacco smoke and thus I have no interest of inhaling it directly from the tobacco itself, even if it weren't highly addictive and unhealthy.
I'm aware he didn't say that. I just wanted to post a picture that took me 30 seconds to Google and upload that illustrated that alcohol is also, in its own way, pretty fucking scary. Not as scary as heroin, or crack, but still far up there. And in the meantime the much less scary, simple weed is illegal in a lot of places.
I have not felt that I'd have any kind of addiction towards alcoholic drinks.
You're not an alcoholic. Though you could try to go cold turkey for a month and write down results.
You're not an alcoholic. Though you could try to go cold turkey for a month and write down results.
Can do it right now. It's little over a month from when I drank last time. I've had no problems, no any kind of feelings that I could connect to withdrawals and I have no need for alcohol now or near future.
So you're not an alcoholic. It's harder to get addicted to alcohol than nicotine. Couple that with the fact that people don't drink alcohol during the working day, but easily just light a cigarette, also makes it easier to get addicted to nicotine. In the same way coffee is also something people would be ridiculously addicted to if it was more addictive than it is because people wake up, take a cup of coffee, go to work, get a cup of coffee, start working, take a cup of coffee, do some more work, get a cup of coffee, etc. Alcohol is a lot harder to take in during the regular day unless you're already a jobless alcoholic. In which case you wake up and go to the store to buy more booze, while drinking booze.
people don't drink alcohol during the working day, but easily just light a cigarette
This is actually increasingly hard to do in the United States. Having a smoke usually means leaving the building of the workplace. It is not uncommon for places with their own security (especially University buildings on campus) to require one be 20 ft from any entrances and ventilation intakes before lighting up. Inside a building, smoke alarms and/or the smell are a dead give-away. It is hard to hide smoking a cigarette. Many restaurants in the metropolitan areas I've been to don't allow smoking anymore either (MA and MI both banned smoking in publicly accessible places of business), so smoking while eating lunch is probably not going to happen.
However, bringing in a flask of your favorite spiced rum and (if needed/desired) chasing it with some mints? Pretty easy.
This is actually increasingly hard to do in the United States.
I'm aware, doesn't change that it's still much easier to go outside, light a cigarette, then going outside and drinking booze at noon. The US is only really just getting around to sweeping smoking out the door, again, about damn time.
Comments
I think it's actually nitrite that interacts with heat to form nitrosamine, but the nitrates break down into nitrites when exposed to high heat, and also produce other compounds as well.
"This doesn't taste like beer at all!" Right. It tastes exactly like beer. Every fucking time.
"You can barely taste the alcohol in this." Well, it's sugary as shit, so duh. In these cases, I could have the same thing without alcohol and it would probably taste as good or better.
I actually don't like to drink because I have a family history of bad alcohol decisions. I'm still willing to take sips here and there both to appease my mates and to see how much tolerance each has respectively built up to alcoholic flavors.
So take any fruit liquor that you like the real fruit it was made from, add a SMALL amount to lemonade, DONE. You won't be able to taste any alcohol, yet if you drink a few you will start to feel it.
Not drinking because of health, history, or personal reasons is fine. But saying it TASTES bad? Did someone make you drink straight vodka once? Perhaps a shot of something? Cos I'm inclined to agree, that's not so tasty...
A well made drink is an art form. Balancing the flavours, much like a complex meal. If it tastes bad, your doing it wrong.
Some people do actually like the flavor, and more power to them. To me it tastes like the poison it is.
Basically, the world health organization categorizes carcinogens based on whether they are definitely, probably, possibly, not sure, and probably not carcinogenic. Both alcohol and smoking are in the definitely category. That means there is enough evidence to show a cause and effect relationship.
Also, according to this study alcohol can be attributed to be the cause of 10% of cancers among men and 3% among women. In other words, one out of every ten guys who has cancer got it because of drinking.
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d1584.full
Also, there is a gigantic wikipedia article about it.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer
If you both smoke AND drink it's even worse. It puts you at a much higher risk of many cancers, specifically laryngeal cancer. So the risk of cancer from doing both is greater than the combined risk of doing each on its own.
http://quitsmoking.about.com/od/tobaccostatistics/a/cancerstats.htm
Here's the thing - Scott doesn't like alcohol. Therefore, he is coming up with a reason that alcohol is the worst thing on earth, and everyone else is incredibly foolish for drinking it, and by not drinking it, he is better than them. He's Finding some way to be able to call his uninformed opinion objective fact. However, He does like biking around the place, New York City, and the combination of the two, so he ignores the increased cancer risk and risk of other pulmonary conditions from the pollution, soot, and particulate matter that come with those.
Scott's not a bubble-boy, nor is he really that paranoid about risks, he just doesn't like like alcohol, and therefore everyone who likes it is stupid for drinking poison, and that means that he is better than them, because he likes something he doesn't like.
Here, let me hand it over to John Cleese to explain it better - not that Scott's an extremist in this case, but it's not dissimilar.
Edit -
Scott, You missed the point severely. Read very carefully what I said, which was "Can you provide decent evidence to your claim that Alcohol is as much of a cancer risk as smoking?"
I'm not arguing the existence of risk, I'm asking about the degree of risk - I mean, you could fall over getting out of bed, smash your head on the floor and die, but that doesn't mean that getting out of bed is therefore just as bad as jumping off a building, though I suppose one could argue that it would be very difficult to jump off a building without getting out of bed.
In other words, I'm not disputing that alcohol can lead to a small increase your cancer risk. Just like inhaling a bunch of soot and pollution while you're out biking to work. But I am disputing that it will increase one's cancer risk as much as smoking, until you can provide clear evidence for that claim. Explain it to me like you think I'm stupid, which I'm sure isn't going to be hard, because you'd be totally justified if you thought as much.
If you also read what many sites, such as world health organization, are saying, is that while there is evidence of some possible benefits of drinking alcohol related to heart disease, the evidence and risk level of alcohol causing cancer outweighs that, and not drinking at all is the recommended course of action.
Alcohol helped humanity get to where it is today seeing as it gave us something to drink that didn't have super poisonous bacteria in it in the days before we knew how to get clean water. There is also a great deal of art and culture surrounding it, and it's not going anywhere any time soon.
But if you value your health more than the flavor of a beverage and intoxicating yourself, you won't drink it. I know many people drink, and would never smoke. And their primary reason for not smoking is that it is so poisonous. Considering that alcohol is also poisonous, that is clearly the realm of hypocrisy.
I feel sorry that you must continuously live your life in a binary black and white view. The world is much more beautiful when one understands the nuances of life. There is no virtue in a lengthy, dull life. Life is not maximized by years spent living it.
Also, most of the statistics I find are also linked to drinking daily, and I doubt most people drink on a daily basis. Hell, half the statistics that indicate a severely elevated risk of cancer would only apply to people who are borderline or outright alcoholics.
The problem I have with your statement is basically thus - It's in the same category, but so is Asbestos, Soot, certain types of estrogen, arsenic, T-cell lymphoma, and of course, X-ray, Gamma, and Neutron radiation. The question is not that they're in the same category, but the amount of exposure over time - A guy who has a few drinks of a Friday after work, or a glass of wine with dinner some nights isn't anywhere near as likely to develop cancer as the guy who is exposed to Asbestos on the same basis, or elevated levels of Neutron radiation for a short period. I mean, sure, if you are a hardcore alco, you might be at equal risk to a pack a day smoker, but how many people out of all the people that drink are serious alcoholics?
You're making a statement that seems to only apply to extreme cases, not the majority of cases. The majority of people who drink do not drink enough to put them in a risk category anywhere near smoking - for example, smoking raises your risk of lung cancer from roughly 1% to about 22%, IIRC. There are less people that smoke than drink, but far more people are killed by smoking related illness than alcohol related illness.
That's why I keep bringing up the soot and pollution you inhale whenever you ride your bike to work - that's in the same category as both alcohol and smoking. But you don't fear the cancer risk there, which I consider - at this point, considering what I've seen and the amounts of alcohol needed to be consumed to cause the levels of risk you're talking about, namely being comparable to smoking - as hypocritical as you consider the people who drink, but would never smoke.
Though, I appreciate your concern, I truly do - after all, we've been communicating on a near daily basis for, what, three years now? Four? I think you'd probably at least be minorly sad if I popped my clogs. Isn't that a strange thought, Scott being a little sad because I dropped off the perch? Some twilight zone shit right there, but anyway - but as we've already established, I smoke, get in fights, eat smoked meats and junk food, drink soda, throw myself out of planes, drive really fast, ride motorbikes, so on, so fourth. I don't think that drinking is the first thing I would cut out, if I had that level of concern about my health.
Churba kinda went there already, let me give my personal opinion. Tobacco (or nicotine in it, to be exact) is highly addictive, lot more than alcohol. So if I would start smoking I would smoke a lot more than I currently drink (once every now and then). Thus my risk of getting cancer would be great deal of higher than the cancer risk from my drinking. Also I don't like the smell of tobacco smoke and thus I have no interest of inhaling it directly from the tobacco itself, even if it weren't highly addictive and unhealthy.
Sure. Doesn't mean alcohol isn't addictive.
However, bringing in a flask of your favorite spiced rum and (if needed/desired) chasing it with some mints? Pretty easy.