Is Wine “Healthier” Than Other Drinks?
The idea of wine being healthy has been debated heavily. First, a clarification–red wine is the wine usually studied. Second, I firmly believe it is not the alcohol content, but rather, the bioflavanoids such as resveratrol from the red grapes (also found in peanuts) that offer the protective benefits. Considering that alcohol does increase your risk of certain types of cancer, skip the wine, eat lots of grapes and you’ll also get many other healthy substances and antioxidants.
Ann Intern Med. 2000;133:411-419 Wine may have protective effects beyond those associated with light alcohol consumption, according to findings of a pooled cohort study involving more than 24,000 subjects. The study is published in a recent issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. The investigation included 13,064 men and 11,459 women, 20 to 98 years of age, who were participants in the Copenhagen City Heart Study, the Copenhagen Male Study, and studies from the Copenhagen County Centre of Preventive Medicine. Subjects reported their average weekly intake of wine, beer, and spirits. The researchers also took into account participants’ smoking status, education level, physical activity level, and body mass index. Compared with nondrinkers (whose relative risk was set at 1.0), light drinkers (those who consumed one to seven alcoholic drinks per week) had a relative risk of death from all causes of 0.82, but those who drank more than 35 drinks per week had a relative risk of 1.1. In general, alcohol consumption was associated with a reduced risk of death from coronary heart disease but an increased risk of death from cancer (especially in subjects who drank more than 21 drinks per week).Wine consumption at all levels — light, moderate, and heavy — was associated with a lower mortality rate in all three categories (all causes, cancer, and heart disease). Subjects who drank eight to 21 glasses of wine per week had a relative all-cause mortality risk of 0.76; from cancer, 0.78, and from heart disease, 0.64. Furthermore, compared with light drinkers who did not drink wine, light drinkers for whom wine made up 30% or more of their total alcohol intake had a 0.67 relative risk of all-cause mortality.Study authors Grønbæk et al speculate that “Wine may contain one or several substances that add to the beneficial effect of intake of a small amount of ethanol.”
