There's no question in my mind that alcohol is a significant health problem. However, it appears that in terms of what was studied in Norway (circulatory diseases, as I recall), alcohol may actually have had a slightly beneficial effect, because alcohol would presumably make heart attacks less likely and produces a mild elevation in HDL. On the other hand, excessive drinking raises the risk of strokes and non-circulatory diseases such as breast cancer. I'm not prepared to argue that the effect of alcohol on circulatory disease in Norway was a "wash," but I think alcohol was at least likely not the only factor. There are enough other problems with alcohol to justify minimizing or eliminating alcohol in one's diet.

There are a lot of complicated interactions here because the "civilized diet" typically has a lot of things wrong with it and it's often hard to tease out what exactly is causing the problems. So I'd be happy to just say that refined carbohydrates, meat consumption, and alcohol are all significant health problems. The important point is that diet has important effects on disease, and post-peak the decline of this "industrialized" diet may have significant health benefits.

There is also the point that factory farms have significant negative public health effects independent of actually eating the stuff they produce. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and avian flu, are being promoted largely through the excess use of antibiotics in factory farms in the U. S. and elsewhere. I understand the EU now prohibits the routine use of antibiotics to promote growth, I'm not sure how this is working or how much it has resulted in a decline in the use of antibiotics (are they just getting around this by justifying antibiotics for disease control, for example?). If H5N1 virus were to become contagious among humans, you might have to go back to the 14th century to find a historical precedent. So if post-peak the factory farming system were to collapse, you'd see less meat eating anyway, but that would probably have a beneficial health effect overall.

Keith