• alcohol cannot be considered as food since it cannot be stored in the body.

By JONES H. MUNANG’ANDU –
While some studies have found that moderate use of alcohol has beneficial health effects, including protection from coronary heart disease, heavy and prolonged intake of alcohol can seriously disturb body chemistry. Heavy drinkers lose their appetite and tend to obtain calories from alcohol rather than from ordinary foods.
Alcohol is rich in calories and can provide substantial amounts of energy. However, if it constitutes the primary source of calories in place of food, the body will lack vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients.
According to some literature on food science, a food is a substance which nourishes the body in four ways: It supplies energy or calories when burned or oxidized; it provides materials for building and upkeep of body tissues, it furnishes means by which body processes are regulated and it provides material, which may be stored as glycogen, fat or protein, or normal body structure, and is non-toxic in nutritionally significant amounts.
Alcohol supplies only calories, and it causes intoxication when taken, as ordinary food.
Consequently, alcohol cannot be considered as food since it cannot be stored in the body. Also it remains in the same form until converted into oxygen and water, so it provides no nourishment of any kind. It aids in neither growth nor repair. It is a useless fluid in the body, as far as help is concerned. It is a dangerous fluid in the body, when all the damage that it does is considered.
Alcohol, when it enters the blood stream and is carried to the liver, it begins being slowly converted into carbon dioxide and water.
This oxidation is quite slow, amounting to about two teaspoons of alcohol an hour. If it were food, it would be equal to the body using up two cubes of sugar each hour and that is really slow. Alcohol neither builds up nor energises any part of the body. Instead it depresses the system and causes a vicious addiction that is difficult to break.
The fact is that drinking alcohol greatly hinders proper nutrition for the body. Chronic alcoholics are always quite malnourished.
This is due to decreased food intake (because they lose their appetite for food), decreased absorption and utilisation of the food eaten (because of changes in the liver and digestive tract), and increased food requirements (because liquor-drinking increases body requirements for calories and certain vitamins, especially those of the B complex).
Two malnutrition diseases that alcoholics are most likely to develop are these: Beriberi, with its characteristic damage to the nerves controlling the legs and arms or damage to the general circulation, with weakness and enlargement of the heart. Pellagra, with a sore tongue; rash over the hands, ankles and neck; abdominal pain, diarrhea, and serious mental changes.
Alcoholic consumption has also been directly linked to several mental diseases in some medical documentations in this area of study. Alcoholics also tend to have high blood levels of the hormone epinephrine and deficiencies of the mineral magnesium.
This combination produces severe arrhythmias, or heartbeat irregularities, a common cause of sudden death in heavy drinkers. Chronic drinkers typically develop hypertension, a leading cause of stroke. In some cases, alcohol withdrawal may lead to delirium tremens (DTs), which produces increasing confusion, sleeplessness, depression, and terrifying hallucinations.
As this delirium progresses, the hands develop a persistent and uncontrollable shaking that may extend to the head and body. Heavy drinking also damages heart muscle. Nearly half of all cases of cardiomyopathy are caused by alcohol abuse. In this heart disease, the heart muscles, particularly the right and left ventricles, enlarge and become flabby, reducing the heart’s blood-pumping efficiency.
This inefficiency reduces the flow of blood through the kidneys, which normally filter excess salts and water out of the blood. Eventually the blood volume rises, causing a potentially fatal backup of fluid in the lungs.
William Jennings Bryan had this to say: “Here is why I will never drink:
1. God never made a human being who in a normal state needs alcohol.       2. God never made a human being strong enough to begin the use of alcohol and be sure that he would not become its victim.
3. God never fixed a day in a human life after which it is safe to begin the use of intoxicating liquors.”
Wow, these could be powerful words to digest with a sober mind to realise why alcohol has not been included on internationally recognised food pyramids.
Dr Roger T. Williams of the University of Texas, a leading biochemist, declares that not only do alcoholics have a poor diet, but a poor diet tends to create alcoholics.
In support of this, he says that drinking alcohol causes a deficiency of the B complex vitamins. But a lack of these vitamins tends to increase the appetite for carbohydrates (sugars and starches).
Alcohol, itself, being only a carbohydrate and a robber of B vitamins, starts a vicious cycle within the human body of both removing vitamins and creating an artificial alcohol thirst .Alcohol may also be linked to immunological problems due to a series of suppressive action on multiple organs in the body hence giving us an opportunity to reflect on the nutrition benefits of liquor that this article may have not highlighted but is best believed by some people in your society as its dietary value. In any given year, a drinking driver is generally involved in about one-half of all fatal accidents. Some experts place it as high as 60 per cent.
This is because alcohol intoxication affects efficiency and safety.
Dr John Bennett (MD) a lead medical scholar from Miami united states explains one of the tests by asserting that” When you take one and half shots of whiskey, or one and half bottles of beer, or one and half glasses of wine, your reaction time is slowed six per cent.
When you take three and half shots of whisky, or three and half bottles of beer, or  three and half glasses of wine, your reaction time is slowed 34 per cent.
To an automobile driver this would mean that, at a speed of 50 miles per hour, it would require 17 additional feet to bring a car to a stop.”
But this problem is compounded by the fact that “loaded” drivers are more confident, take more risks, and have far less coordination and good judgment. The fact is that Alcoholic beverages contain ethyl alcohol, which is an anesthetic and not a stimulant. Its effects are inevitable. It undermines power of decision, distorts judgment, impairs eyesight, retards muscular reaction, and increases accidents.
Economists’ postulates among the function of money that it ‘should be a measure of value’ but abusing alcohol from our hard earned money certainly takes away that value from our money when it is on our budget due to its toxic effect to our bodies when consumed. Amigos if you cannot stop alcohol then drink responsibly but if you have not started stay away completely.
The way to cope with alcohol abuse is not by resorting to such things as eating potato chips or eggs to slow down the absorption rate. Drinking cream before an alcoholic binge is also not the solution. It is true that slowing down the absorption rate may keep you from becoming tipsy, but you may still be drinking too much. The answer does not lie in taking a cold shower, drinking black coffee, going out into the cool air, exercising or going for a swim to “liven oneself up.” Such activities may change the way one feels, but they do not change the blood-alcohol level of the body or slow down the cell damage. What is really needed is to be moderate in our use of alcoholic drinks, if we use them at all.
Statistics indicate that one person in every seven that begins drinking ends up as a confirmed alcoholic. The only answer that medical science knows for avoiding the addictive properties of alcohol is total abstinence.
The author is a  motivational speaker, health commentator & Health practitioner Email; jonesmuna@yahoo.com Skype id; jones muna