wine and health

Wine appreciation is an icon of “the good life,” but can it really be true that something as simple as a glass of wine with dinner measurably improves quality of life? There’s good evidence that it does. Quality of life (QoL) may seem a subjective concept, impossible to quantify, as irreproducible as numerical wine scores, but QoL has become a vital concept in clinical research. Everything from cancer treatments to plastic surgery can be appraised in terms of impact on quality of life. Wine drinking is no different. Quality of Life is more than good health The concept first appeared in the medical literature in the 1970’s, as medical and surgical treatments advanced in terms of their ability to save lives, but sometimes at the expense of significant side effects.  In a similar vein, scholarly investigations about wine consumption tended to focus on its detrimental effects until recently. Only when it became apparent that wine drinkers actually lived longer and enjoyed better...