A Drink a Day Raises Women's Risk of Cancer, Study Indicates

For years, many women have been buoyed by the news about one of life's guilty pleasures: That nightly glass of wine may not only take the edge off a day but also improve their health. Now it turns out that sipping pinot noir might not be such a good idea after all.

A new study involving nearly 1.3 million middle-aged British women -- the largest ever to examine alcohol and cancer in women -- found that just one glass of chardonnay, a single beer or any other type of alcoholic drink per day increases the risk of a variety of cancers.

"That's the take-home message," said Naomi E. Allen of the University of Oxford, who led the study being published March 4 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "If you are regularly drinking even one drink per day, that's increasing your risk for cancer."

Understandably, the study may leave many women scratching their heads, given all the talk about red wine being something akin to a fountain of youth.

"I thought drinking wine was good for you," said Mirella Romansini, 27, of Chevy Chase, outside Paul's liquor store in Northwest Washington. "Now they are saying it increases your risk for cancer? Yes, I would say I'm surprised."

Romansini is hardly alone. At least half of U.S. women drink sometimes, and even the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the government's official bible on what we should be putting into our mouths, says alcohol can have "beneficial" effects, allowing women as much as one drink a day (men get two, of course).

Confused? It turns out the guidelines were never intended to recommend that anyone drink for his or her health. Yes, it's true that studies have indicated that moderate drinking may cut the risk of heart disease and other ailments. And researchers have identified a substance in red wine (remember resveratrol?) that could offer a host of benefits.

But officials have long worried about sending the wrong message, giving people who take extraordinary risks if they drink -- young people, pregnant women, those prone to alcoholism -- permission to abuse alcohol. As a result, officials have long tried to walk a fine line between acknowledging the possible benefits of alcohol and encouraging people to start drinking or to abuse it. The guidelines were intended to set an upper limit on what might be safe, not a recommended daily dose.

"It's a level of consumption that generally has been found in scientific studies to be associated with a relatively low risk of harms," said Robert D. Brewer of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "But low risk does not mean no risk."

In fact, many previous studies have found that alcohol appears to increase the risk of breast cancer, and that heavy drinking could make men and women prone to other cancers as well. The new study is a large-scale attempt to explore all cancer risks posed by more typical drinking levels and a spectrum of alcoholic beverages.

Allen and her colleagues analyzed data collected by the Million Women Study, which since 1996 has been gathering detailed information from 1.28 million women ages 50 to 64. The researchers examined how much alcohol women reported consuming when they volunteered for the study and again three years later, and examined whether there was any link with the 68,775 cancers they developed over an average of the next seven years.

Even among women who consumed as little as 10 grams of alcohol a day on average -- the equivalent of about one drink -- the risk for cancer of the breast, liver and rectum was elevated, the researchers found. Among women who also smoked, the risk of mouth and throat cancer also increased.

Based on the findings, the researchers estimated that about 5 percent of all cancers diagnosed in women each year in the United States are the result of low to moderate alcohol consumption. Most are breast cancers, with drinking accounting for 11 percent of cases -- about 20,000 extra cases each year -- the researchers estimated.

In any group of 1,000 U.S. women up to age 75 who consumed an average of one drink a day, the researchers calculated, there would be 15 extra cancers; two drinks per day would result in 30 extra cancers, and so forth.

The risk appeared the same regardless of whether women drank wine, beer or any other type of alcohol. Allen noted that even less than one drink per day may increase the risk.

"There doesn't seem to be a threshold at which alcohol consumption is safe," she said.

The reason alcohol increases the risk for cancer is not entirely clear, but there are several possibilities, including that it enables carcinogens to do their damage, increases inflammation or, in the case of breast cancer, boosts estrogen levels.

Several researchers noted that the findings were essentially consistent with previous studies, and despite its size the study does have shortcomings. The researchers could not, for example, distinguish between women who drank only one or two drinks every day and those who drank seven drinks all at once. Some researchers worried the findings would unnecessarily frighten women and deprive them of the possible health benefits of an occasional drink.

"We can't use this to scare people away from alcohol," said Eric Rimm of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Allen plans to analyze the study data to try to determine whether the net risks from cancer outweigh any heart benefits. But others researchers were doubtful.

"Among women, the major cause of death by far during the middle age years is cancer," Michael S. Lauer and Paul Sorlie of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute noted in a editorial accompanying the study. "For this large group, the only reasonable recommendation we can make is there is no clear evidence that alcohol has medical benefits."

As it turns out, the federal government is rewriting its dietary guidelines, including the part about alcohol consumption, and will consider the new study in that process.

"No one study is ever sufficient to make a recommendation," said Linda Van Horn, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University who is chairing the committee revising the guidelines. "But it will be added to the body of literature that will be reviewed."

In the meantime, several experts said women should consult with their doctors about whether they should drink.

"It really comes down to a personal decision based on their own history and risk factors," Rimm said. "But it shouldn't be based only on health. Some people drink for cultural reasons; some people drink for religious reasons. I personally think it enhances the flavor of meals, and some people think it enhances the company you're with."

The Obama Team's Drink of Choice? Coke, Not Pepsi

In an apparent homage to the new President, PepsiCo has plastered the sides of buses and bus stops in the nation's capital with slogans like "Yes You Can," "Optimismmmm" and "Hope." In each poster, the letter O is inscribed with the redesigned Pepsi logo, a red, white and blue sphere that echoes the rising-sun image used by the Obama campaign. (See the best of the Obama Inaugural merchandise.)

It is not hard to interpret the message. Since 1984, Pepsi has been marketing itself as the hip, happening beverage of youth — "The choice of a new generation," as its longtime slogan went. And Barack Obama, one of the youngest men to serve as President, is nothing if not hip, especially among young consumers who supported him by wide margins. Pepsi says the campaign is not a political endorsement. "We're not interested in following political tailwinds," says Nicole Bradley, a Pepsi spokeswoman. "But we are interested in cultural change." (Watch a video about selling Obamamania.)

That said, the marketing campaign, which includes TV and print ads as well, does raise a question: Is Pepsi actually the choice of the Obama Administration?

My reporting at the White House suggests the answer is a resounding no. Several senior Administration officials are committed cola drinkers, and without fail they spend their days sipping from a can of Diet Coke, a product of Pepsi's chief competitor, Coca-Cola. On Monday, as members of Congress and key lobbyists filed into a briefing room for the final event of a daylong fiscal summit, they were greeted with an ice chest full of complimentary Diet Coke, not Diet Pepsi. (Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus was one of many to grab a can.) Hours earlier, at a breakout session with members of Congress in the Indian Treaty Room, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag handled not one, but two cans of Diet Coke during the nearly two-hour session. Larry Summers, Obama's top economic adviser, rarely walks anywhere in the White House complex without a can of Diet Coke in his hand. He is well known for interrupting conversations to take another swig. (Watch Coke and Pepsi marketing teams go head-to-head in the best and worst Superbowl commercials of 2009.)

But these examples do not even constitute the most damning evidence against Pepsi. Late last year, Obama's nascent Administration worked out of transition offices in a downtown government building, which was serviced by only Pepsi-brand vending machines, according to three people who worked in the building. Two Administration officials have told me that a group of Obama aides, frustrated by having to run the security gauntlet to go to the corner store, stocked a refrigerator with Diet Coke in open rebellion against the available options. The pattern has continued at the White House. In his West Wing office, as in his previous office at Harvard University, Summers has a refrigerator stocked with cans of the decidedly non-Pepsi beverage. (See a list of who's who in Obama's White House.)

Though Pepsi is available in the West Wing mess, it is rarely, if ever, seen out in the open. On Thursday, the recycling bin outside White House spokesman Robert Gibbs' office contained six cans of Diet Coke and one can of Sprite Zero, which is also a Coca-Cola product. In another part of the building, I asked a White House official, who had a can of Diet Coke sitting on his desk, if the Obama Administration had a clear bias for Coke over Pepsi. "I think that's true," the official responded, with a smile. "Don't most Americans?"

To a certain degree, yes. Nationwide, Coke is more popular than Pepsi, but not by the same margin seen among White House staff. Beverage Digest, a trade publication, reported that Coke and Diet Coke had a 27.2% share of the carbonated-beverage market in 2007, compared with a 16.7% share for Pepsi and Diet Pepsi.

As an official matter, the U.S. government is usually nonpartisan in the cola wars. In congressional office buildings, both Coke and Pepsi products are sold at vending machines, as they are in the waiting room at Andrews Air Force Base, where reporters wait to board Air Force One. In the air, the President's personal flight crew offers either cola to passengers. Nor is soda the only option for officials working in the White House. Several members of the press operation keep going with a steady diet of coffee, while one younger member of the White House Web team was spotted recently walking to work with a case of kombucha, a fermented tea drink sold at health food stores.

The health-conscious President is not known to have a strong preference for either Coke or Pepsi — though he was spotted at one debate sipping from a bottle of Aquafina water, which is made by PepsiCo. Obama is, however, a well-known fan of Honest Tea, a drink made by a company that is 40% owned by Coca-Cola.