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20070716

Preserved in alcohol? News that the French paradox ends when you die

UPDATED!

I came across this interesting item when looking for a good online currency converter.

(Sometimes I wonder about my ability to use search terms effectively.)

$4725.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth


According to the Cadaver Calculator (it's hard to resist giving it a spin so go ahead a give it a try) my body is worth $4725 and that's about $500 less than it could be if I didn't drink. Had I selected zero as my usual daily alcohol intake I would been over the $5000 mark, and that kind of money would've gone a long way in establishing my cave, especially the Bordeaux section of it which is currently quite empty.

This is shocking but maybe I am missing something. Isn't a healthy cadaver a valuable one? Are all of us winos congratulating ourselves for a healthy lifestyle modeled on the French paradox diet really just convincing ourselves?

When in doubt about how things really work, I turn to the Internet. Woah, wine = health! It seems I could be a monkey at a typewriter and still return Google results that list all the ways a drink with dinner is health benefit, especially when it's wine consumed at a one-drink-per-day rate. Is there a day that goes by that a scientist doesn't announce some benefit of moderate wine consumption?

Could the Cadaver Calculator please use formulas that are compatible with the French Diet? Somebody please fix the quiz so that this plus is not a minus to my personal worth.

[Okay, here's an intriguing update that fell into my lap just after I posted this. Apparently, the New York Times just published a news story with the title "Alcohol Goes on a Health Kick," immediately implying that alcohol never is on such a kick for your body. This is horrible. But wait -- if you go on to read half way through the article, you will get to the part that says "alcohol causes cell damage". So breathe a sigh of relief. This "cell" business is clearly what the morticians who wrote this quiz are on about. So there are some damaged cells in my body as the result of the alcohol in wine. It doesn't mean that my drinking is not healthy, just that I got some issues as a cadaver. And, come to think of it, why would I care about that anyway -- I'd be dead already!]

2 comments:

JD said...

Well, you're worth $350 more than I am. I just don't understand this. I think a body with "issues," if indeed moderate alcohol consumption is an issue, should be worth more not less. Wouldn't peculiar problems be a lot more interesting to the lab rats than a perfectly healthy body?

Marcus said...

JD,

Interesting view on the situation.

I typed in a comment here last night rebutting it and talking about heart disease but perhaps I was less-than-moderate in my alcohol consumption at the time as there is obviously no trail of what I wrote now... Whoops.

I'm more than underachieving cadaver, I can't even get to commenting successfully on my own site!