"light drinking" news and stories

Often times, health advice falls into the "What do we make of it?" column. This can be especially true when it involves drugs such as alcohol and caffeine where people have predetermined biases or agendas.

So here's a potentially inflammatory article from the L.A. Times discussing a U.K. study considered to be "the largest and most rigorous...on low levels of alcohol or caffeine" during pregnancy. The first nine words of the title clearly state "Pregnancy has room for a little wine or beer" and goes on to point out that though children of women who drank heavily during pregnancy had the most problems, children of women who were "light drinkers" during pregnancy actually had fewer behavioral or cognitive problems by age three than children of women who abstained. [Important to note: Light drinking was defined as "not more than two drinks (a 4-fluid-ounce glass of wine or 10 fluid ounces of weak beer) on a single occasion and not more than two occasions per week."]