Chemically, any distilled beverage consists largely of ethyl alcohol. Other components include esters, fusel oils (isobutyl and amyl alcohols) and, of course, the ingredients added to flavor and color the beverage. Unflavored grain spirit is merely alcohol and water. It is the impurities and additives that largely contribute to hangovers (Dabney 1974). As mentioned, early distilled alcohol was used only as a medicine because distillers did not yet know how to separate the unpleasant beginning and end fractions of the distilled liquid from the middle, and because aging, which mellows the product, was unknown. The effect of the early medicinal wine brandies must have been strong indeed.
Nutritionally, distilled beverages are high in calories but contain little in the way of other nutrients. Because each gram of 86 proof alcohol imparts 7 calories, the average drink bristles with 106 calories, in addition to any calories in the mix (Robertson et al. 1986). Some researchers, however, contend that the calories in alcohol have, in the past, served as an important source of energy for the poor (Braudel 1973). One study suggests that in France during the 1780s, 10 percent of an individual’s caloric intake was supplied by alcohol (Austin 1985). The same was probably the case for slaves in the Caribbean: Jamaican rum yields twice the calories of a similar measure of molasses. A counter-argument, of course, is that alcohol was allowed to replace more nutritional foods. John McCusker (1989) has noted that alcohol calories are more quickly absorbed than those from other sources; he credits the ability of early. Americans to consume such large amounts of rum and whiskey to this propensity.
Yet, a large amount of any kind of alcohol can be nutritionally disastrous because it destroys vitamin C and the B-complex vitamins. Indeed, about the only remaining cases of frankly nutritional diseases (such as pellagra) found in the developed world are among alcoholics. In addition, although it appears that moderate alcohol consumption can help prevent heart disease, large amounts can help cause it. Alcohol is also suspected of being a factor in the etiology of some cancers and is known to be a culprit in causing much liver damage, including cirrhosis.
Another unfavorable aspect of distilled spirits is the social and physical harm they have historically brought to peoples unaccustomed to them (Mancall 1995). In America, Asia, Africa, and Australia, rum and whiskey became instrumental, in the hands first of European traders and then of European imperialists, in destroying aboriginal life (Miller 1985). It is significant that in Mexico and Peru, where some alcoholic beverages existed at the time of European contact, the aboriginal peoples and their traditions have fared much better than those in places like Australia, where alcohol had been unknown.
Clearly, distilled spirits have had a tremendous impact on human history and health. In a relatively few centuries, their manufacture has moved from the quasi-magical procedure of the alchemists to a global industry that undergirds the economies of entire regions. But from the “gin epidemic” of England to the endemic drunkenness of the Australian aborigines, spirits have also caused such misery that practically every society in the world has laws and customs to regulate their consumption, and many states have tried to outlaw them. That such attempts have been largely unsuccessful demonstrates the existence of a worldwide, collective opinion about the pleasures and profits provided by alcohol, which outweighs the harm it continues to cause.
James Comer
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World History
