Put Down That Glass Of Wine. It Might Be Bad For You.

My dad has been slowly switching from beer to wine. I'd like to say it's my influence, but I can hardly take full credit. Certainly one of the motivating factors has been all the great health news about drinking red wine in moderation. I used to keep track of all the health benefits of red wine, but they got so numerous that I had to stop, otherwise I would be reporting several new ones per week. Literally.

One of the longest standing research results about red wine's health properties has been its benefits for the heart, specifically it's tendency to lower cholesterol, blood pressure, and prevent heart disease through its friendly compound resveratrol.

Well, they were wrong.

At least that's what a new study suggests. Conducted by the UC San Francisco School of Nursing this study looked at the test subjects from various studies that purported to show benefits from drinking red wine in moderation, and found that the subjects were too varied in their drinking habits to have provided statistically significant data. In particular they found that many of them had actually quit drinking prior to showing benefits to their health.

So while this study doesn't show that drinking wine in moderation is actually bad for you, it does undermine some of the studies that say the opposite. I'm sure there are plenty of soundly researched studies out there that do conclusively point to some health benefits to red wine, but apparently we all have to be a bit more cautious in justifying our consumption for medical reasons.

Even if red wine isn't as good for my dad as we think, I'm happy that he's increasingly more willing to share a bottle with me.

Read the full story.

Posted by: Alder on April 20, 2006 8:47 AM: Tweet; Share this post elsewhere: Digg it! - Add to del.icio.us - Add to Stumbleupon - Add to Reddit; Filed under: Wine News

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Comments (2)

Hasan wrote:

04.20.06 at 3:50 PM

It seems there are studies that contradict other studies coming out every day... I can't bother with any of them! Just eat, drink, and be merry.

Sergio Arango wrote:

04.20.06 at 8:04 PM

I read references about this article in Cardiology web pages, but not the original paper. It's a metanalysis of other articles. In my experience of following this kind of studies, just wait for some months or years and you will see something different coming out. As you can recall from the movie Sideways Miles' character is an alcoholic, also some real life wine lovers are true alcoholics. Wine lover is a nice custume for the alcoholic. Don't get me wrong I'm a wine lover too. I don't doubt wines health benefits but neither its dangers. Have just one or two glasses of wine only is a fallacy. If it's true they wouldn't be selling that much 750cc bottles, but much more half bottles or even smaller ones.