After a stressful day, sometimes all you want is to crack open a bottle of wine.
But you’d better make it a generous pour – as a scientist claims it’s only safe to drink one glass a year.
The human body can only safely consume one ‘large’ glass of wine every 12 months because it is too ‘toxic’, according to Professor David Nutt, a leading drug researcher at Imperial College London.
He says that if alcohol was invented today it would fail modern food safety standards because of how harmful it is to our bodies.
Studies on the toxicology of alcohol – the adverse effects chemicals have on living organisms – reveal that the ‘maximal recommended amount’ per year is just one large glass of wine, according to the expert.
Speaking on the BBC‘s Instant Genius podcast, the 74-year-old said: ‘I can accept that 40,000 years of alcohol use is precedence but if we invented it today we wouldn’t have that precedence.
‘So what would we do? Well, what we would do is you would put your alcohol through food safety testing and it would fail.
‘It would fail because the maximal recommended amount of alcohol any individual should consume in a year, based on the toxicology, is a large glass of wine per year.
The human body can only safely consume one large glass of wine every 12 months because it is too ‘toxic’, according to an expert
Professor David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London, said the maximum recommended amount of alcohol any individual should consume in a year is one large glass of wine
‘So that tells you how relatively harmful alcohol is.’
Professor Nutt, from Bristol, is an experienced neuropsychopharmacologist and former government chief drugs advisor.
He argued that – apart from tobacco – alcohol is responsible for more deaths across the world than any other drug.
However, he added: ‘My approach to alcohol is not that it’s all bad. If it was all bad, it would have disappeared.
‘There are good aspects to it, and it would be nice if we could maximise the benefits and minimise the harms.’
In recent decades some studies have found a link between the moderate consumption of red wine and improved heart health.
But in 2018 a major global study, published in one of the world’s leading medical journals, confirmed there is ‘no safe level of alcohol consumption’.
The research, published in The Lancet Public Health, said the risk of cancer and other diseases from drinking alcohol outweighs any potential protections.
In 2018 a major global study, published in one of the world’s leading medical journals, confirmed there is ‘no safe level of alcohol consumption’
Commenting on the study at the time Professor David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, sounded a note of caution about the findings.
‘Given the pleasure presumably associated with moderate drinking, claiming there is no ‘safe’ level does not seem an argument for abstention,’ he said.
‘There is no safe level of driving, but the government does not recommend that people avoid driving.
‘Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.’
In the UK, men and women are advised not to drink more than 14 units of alcohol per week on a regular basis.
This is the equivalent of around four large glasses of wine.
