Everything in moderation – at least when it comes to alcohol – has been the takeaway from a litany of studies touting the health benefits of drinking.

But a new meta-analysis claims that the group of abstainers include past drinkers and unhealthy teetotalers that skew the purported benefits of having up to two drinks per day.

Once the goalposts were moved, the J-shaped curve for alcohol and all-cause mortality actually turned into a straight line: more drinks means less life, says the study, in the latest issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

“There’s a general idea out there that alcohol is good for us, because that’s what you hear reported all the time,” said Tim Stockwell, the lead researcher, of the University of Victoria Centre for Addictions Research in British Columbia. “But there are many reasons to be skeptical.”

The analysis looked at 87 previous studies found through keyword searches in PubMed. Combined, the peer-reviewed papers looked at roughly 4 million people, among whom more than 360,000 deaths were recorded.

The claims of many studies that 20 grams of daily alcohol intake – two drinks per night – were beneficial to health were found to be baseless, once the former drinkers were cut out.

[pullquote]The study comes on the heels of several health officials urging any amount of alcohol to be considered a health risk.[/pullquote]

Ostensibly, those previous drinkers had poor health outcomes that may have turned them into abstainers, according to the authors.

Overall, the results indicated that drinking is bad for you, they claim.

“The pattern of results is more consistent with a linear dose response than a J-shaped curve describing the risk relationships between level of alcohol consumption and all-cause mortality,” the authors write.

However, the latest study did not differentiate between the types of alcohol – an especially important factor, considering that many of the health claims focus on red wine’s cardiovascular benefits.

The study comes on the heels of several health officials urging any amount of alcohol to be considered a health risk. Doctors in the United Kingdom declared that any amount of alcohol is a cancer risk. Last summer, a Harvard team found that even a glass of wine can increase the cancer risk for women, particularly breast cancer.

The health benefits of alcohol have been subject to debate by scientists for years. A litany had described cardiovascular benefits of limited drinking – but certain recent studies have countered that theory.