Alcoholic drink
Alcoholic drinks encompass a variety of beverages, primarily including beer, wine, and distilled spirits. These drinks are produced through a fermentation process, where yeast breaks down sugars found in various foods, resulting in ethyl alcohol, or ethanol. The choice of base ingredient varies; for example, beer is derived from malted barley, wine from grapes, and vodka from potatoes. While alcohol can induce feelings of excitement and euphoria, it also affects judgment and can lead to impaired decision-making. Moderate consumption of alcohol may offer some health benefits, particularly for heart health, yet excessive intake is linked to serious health risks, including various cancers and cardiovascular issues. Historically, the production of alcoholic beverages dates back to around 7000 BCE, with ancient cultures like the Sumerians and Egyptians incorporating beer into their diets and rituals. Today, the consumption of alcohol is widespread, but health guidelines recommend limiting intake to two drinks per day for men and one for women, emphasizing moderation to avoid the dangers associated with binge drinking.
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Alcoholic drink
Alcoholic drinks are beverages of beer, wine, and distilled spirits. Drinkable alcohol is the substance formed when microscopic organisms called yeast ferment, or break down, sugars in various foods. The result is a material called ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, the primary ingredient in alcoholic drinks. Different alcoholic beverages are fermented from different foods. For example, beer is made from malted barley sugars, wine is made from grape sugars, and vodka is made from potato sugars.
Alcohol has intoxicating effects on the human brain, affecting neurotransmitters to impair judgment and decrease inhibitions. Excessive alcohol consumption over time has been linked to the development of certain cancers, heart problems, and weight gain. Because of these issues, physicians have advised people to limit their daily alcoholic drinks to two per day for men and one per day for women. In some cases, however, moderate alcohol consumption has been shown to benefit heart health.
Background
The history of alcoholic drinks dates at least to about 7000 BCE. At this time, people in northern China were mixing their own alcoholic beverages from rice, honey, and fermented fruit. At about the same time in the Middle East, societies were making their own beer from fermented barley, a type of grain. The ancient Sumerian people of the Middle East even worshiped a goddess of beer and recorded their recipes for making the substance. Beer was an important part of the Sumerians' diets because the water in Sumerian rivers was usually polluted with waste.
Beer was also popular in ancient Babylonia and Egypt. Nearly every class of people in ancient Egypt drank beer, from pharaohs to children. Some ancient Egyptian laborers were paid in beer. Ancient ceramic pottery both from China and the Middle East has preserved samples of these early alcoholic beverages that modern scientists have studied.
As one of the earliest alcoholic drinks to be created, beer developed and improved over a long period. The Egyptians flavored their beer with dates and olive oil. Christian monks and other Europeans added various plants to their beer in the Middle Ages. The flavorings included nettles, ivy plants, and hops. Hops are the flowers from climbing hop plants. Flavoring beer remained the most common use for hops into the twenty-first century.
Wine, meanwhile, developed around the same time as beer. In about 6000 BCE, the people of Western Asia started cultivating grape vines for fermenting grapes into wine. Winemaking soon spread to the Mediterranean areas of Italy, Greece, and Palestine. The making and selling of wine became important industries in these regions. After the early centuries of the Common Era, wine became popular across Europe, as many Christian monks started making their own. Winemakers eventually created the beverage with fruits other than grapes, such as peaches and various berries.
Distilled beverages are the third primary category of alcoholic drinks. Arabs developed the distillation process at some point in the Middle Ages. Distillation involves heating an already fermented alcoholic liquid to produce steam. The steam is captured and cooled. This process separates water from the alcohol to produce a beverage of even higher alcoholic content than the original fermented alcohol. Naturally fermented alcoholic drinks usually contain up to 14 percent alcohol. Distilled beverages, known as liquor, contain significantly higher percentages.
Different foods are distilled to produce different liquors. For example, corn is distilled for bourbon whiskey, malts and grains for scotch whiskey, potatoes for vodka, sugar cane for rum, and wine for brandy.
Overview
Alcohol is one of the most regularly consumed drugs in the world. It affects the human body in many ways. Alcohol increases the brain's levels of a chemical called norepinephrine. Higher amounts of norepinephrine in the body make people excited and impulsive. This is why people who have drunk a considerable amount of alcohol in one sitting often lose their self-control and act fearless. As people consume more alcohol in a given period, they generally become happier, more excited, and more talkative. At the same time, alcohol can ward off depression and fatigue. These combined effects create an overall pleasurable experience for people who have been drinking.
Alcohol can be beneficial or detrimental to overall human health. Whether alcohol helps or hurts the body generally depends on the amount a person regularly drinks. The amount of alcohol considered healthy to drink every day varies by individual. Broadly, doctors in the twenty-first century claim that a healthy amount of alcohol is two drinks a day for men and one a day for women. In this context, a singular drink is twelve ounces of beer, five ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of liquor, such as whiskey or gin.
Regularly drinking more than the daily recommended amount of alcohol can cause liver damage, high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease. Meanwhile, it increases a person's risk of developing head, neck, breast, and colorectal cancers. Heavy drinkers are at even greater risk of developing head and neck cancers if they also smoke tobacco. Individuals who are particularly susceptible to developing cancer, or who already have cancer, should not drink alcohol at all. Pregnant women should also abstain from drinking alcohol.
On the other hand, moderate amounts of alcohol have been shown to increase heart health by raising good cholesterol in the blood. This is especially true of red wine, which contains substances called antioxidants that remove potentially heart-damaging elements from the body. Drinking small amounts of alcohol every day, particularly one serving of wine, can help relax the body, which contributes to overall well-being.
Doctors disagree on exactly how much alcohol is safe to drink per week. Some advise drinking lightly every day, while others suggest drinking moderately a few times a week. People should not consume all their weekly recommended drinks in one sitting. This is called binge drinking, and the practice is considered unhealthy and dangerous.
Bibliography
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