Moderate alcohol use does not reduce cardiometabolic disease risk among veterans of European, African, or Hispanic ancestry, a new study suggests. The findings add to growing evidence that traditional research methods applied to drinking levels and certain disease outcomes have created illusory and misleading results. Heavy drinking is known to be linked to coronary heart disease (CHD) and type 2 diabetes (T2D). Traditional observational studies have, however, associated moderate drinking with the lowest risk and abstinence with a moderate risk (the U-curve or J-curve effect). In recent years, the U-curve has been increasingly attributed to confounding errors–when study results are distorted by other factors. In this case, the abstinence category is implicated since it establishes a false equivalence between study participants with widely differing risk factors (lifelong non-drinkers, those who stopped drinking for health or other alcohol-related problems, and those who falsely reporte
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