Have you ever noticed that every month seems to bring a trendy new diet and yet obesity

rates continue to rise and with it a growing number of health problems?

That's why I wrote my new book How Not To Diet.

Check it out at your local public library.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast.

I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger.

Going to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the leading killer of Americans,

year 2000, was tobacco followed by diet and inactivity, the third leading killer, alcohol.

About half of alcohol related deaths were due to sudden causes like motor vehicle accidents,

the other half were slower, and the leading chronic cause was alcoholic liver disease.

So today we're going to look at alcohol and your health.

In our first story we ask if even light drinking can cause cancer, why don't doctors warn

their patients about it?

We've known about the possible association between the consumption of alcohol with excessive

mortality from cancer for more than 100 years.

Though the evidence is accumulating that alcohol drinking is also associated with pancreatic

cancer, prostate cancer, melanoma, we're pretty certain that alcohol increases risk of

mouth cancer, throat cancer, esophageal cancer, colorectal cancer, liver cancer, voice

box cancer, and breast cancer.

Current estimates suggest that alcohol causes about 5.8% of all cancer deaths in these organs

worldwide.

Here's how that breaks down for men and women.

...