[Health counseling about alcoholic beverage consumption]

This paper reviews the scientific evidence on the relationship between consumption of alcoholic beverages and health, at the individual and population levels. This evidence is used to inform the health counselling on such consumption. We propose that during the individual clinical encounter, the counselling should be adapted to clinical characteristics of the patient (mainly age and cardiovascular risk), consider the patient preferences (because there are alternatives to alcohol for cardiovascular prevention for those who do not like alcohol), and prudent ('primum non nocere'). For the population, the advice should be: "if you consume alcohol, less is better".