wine and health

France’s health minister Agnès “buzzkill” Buzyn   has again provoked the ire of the wine industry with a new proposal to require a large red warning label on all bottles, admonishing pregnant women to avoid all alcohol and reminding buyers of the legal age limit (18) for drinking. A coalition of 64 of France’s top winemakers are pushing back, declaring in a letter to Le Figaro that this is nothing less than an affront to the soul of their country. As translated by British newspaper The Telegraph, the letter implores their countrymen to recognize the importance of the “thousands of tourists [who] come to discover this France, bosom of the art de vivre that is the envy of the world and where wine plays a leading role.” They mourn the prospect of bottles defaced “with labels covered in lugubrious and deathly signs.” Warning labels are already required in France as in many other countries, but the size is not specified; Buzyn want a 2 cm (about an inch) wide red banner. I cringe at ...

The UK’s Royal Society for Public Health recently issued a warning that “the insidious increase in the size of wine glasses in bars and restaurants in the past decade” has led many of us to have “unwittingly increased the number of invisible calories we consume in alcohol.” They called for food labeling laws to include calorie content in alcoholic beverages, which are exempt. Writing in the British Medical Journal , RSPH chair Professor Fiona Sim cites a survey which found that 80% of adults did not know the calorie content of their drinks, and speculates that in addition to gargantuan glasses, this may be contributing to the obesity epidemic in the UK. According to the Professor, the average portion served is a whopping 250 ml. (8 ½ ounces!) If that’s true I can’t wait for my trip to the UK this October.  While public health officials are right to be concerned with rising obesity rates and abuse of alcohol, in this case they have missed the mark. For one thing, if larger glasse...