Second, in addition to a bias in the literature that does not allow a clear separation of the effects of drinking pattern from those of overall consumption, there are other measurement problems in alcohol epidemiology that affect the interpretation of findings. Typically, cohort studies have measured alcohol consumption at just one point or period in the respondent’s life. In particular, even though it has been argued and demonstrated convincingly that separating ex-drinkers from lifetime abstainers or very light drinkers is essential for identifying both beneficial and detrimental effects [134], many studies in medical epidemiology continue to fail to make this crucial distinction. Furthermore, aside from not being able to capture variability in consumption (see above), many of the largest cohorts used a single-item semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire, which depicts either frequency or volume of consumption depending on the answer category. These and other problems have long been recognized [233-235], but are still overlooked in much of the relevant research. In addition, measurement of alcohol consumption is not always in line with theoretical assumptions. For example, studies postulating accumulated volume as
