An inspiring piece of information I came across recently is that all of the Irish rugby team are obese. From backline to forwards, though fit, fast, and muscular athletes with low body fat, they are technically obese according to their body mass index (BMS). Oh, that someday I may be so!
It is on the basis of BMI that the "Healthy Ireland" Government initiative and the World Health Organisation establish obesity statistics. Pshaw!
Last March my little heart beat faster at the joyous news that moderate drinking is good for your heart and that even heavy drinking may lower the risk of heart attack. One day I may even try moderate drinking.
Apart from good health I have another reason. On a family visit to Brussels recently I miscalculated the strength of Belgian beer and memories of a thoroughly enjoyable (I'm told) weekend remain foreign to me. My mission, should I choose it, is to improve my tolerance . . .
Yes, that study published in the British Medical Journal last March followed an investigation of records of 1.93 million UK adults who were all free of cardiovascular disease at the start. It found a relationship between moderate drinking and a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.
But, a caveat dear reader before you rush to the pub or off-licence. (Yes, I know, there is always the killjoy.) This was about the UK. Okay? There, moderate drinking for the purposes of this study was determined as no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, equivalent to seven pints of beer.
Yep. Hilarious. A beer a day!
In the UK heavy drinkers exceed this limit. In Ireland, where our units are different, the recommended weekly consumption is under 5.5pints a week for women and 8.5 pints for men. A week? A week. Stop laughing back there.
In idealistic student days at UCG (now NUI Galway, but by any name as sweet) back in the last millennium, I once organised a debate on the topic That Moderation Breeds Contempt.
Studies like that one on alcohol in the UK and which find healthy athletes to be obese do that. They breed contempt. Ignore. Eat/drink less, exercise more.
That is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know.
Moderation, meaning without excess, temperately, from late Middle English moderacion, and Latin moderation- (stem of moderatio)
inaword@irishtimes.com
