wine and health

If you are a fan of the Hello Kitty products (the smiling kitten face icon from Japan) then you will want to know that there is now a hello Kitty brand of pink sparkling wine. Produced by the Italian wine producer Tenimenti Castelrotto in partnership with luxury goods company Camomilla, Hello Kitty spumante is currently available only in the U.S., Russia, and Singapore. According to winemaker Patrizia Torti, “'Hello Kitty … is a recognised cult fashion icon among teenagers and adults around the world.” Is Hello Kitty really grown up enough to be in the wine business? What should the minimum drinking age be anyway? We are dealing with some pretty sticky issues here. We are conflicted about marketing alcoholic beverages to young people (not that Hello Kitty is exclusively a young brand) and there are definitely mixed mesages on drinking. In the U.S. the debate has centered around whether the legal drinking age should be 18 or 21. here’s a brief summary of the arguments: Against ...

Wine drinkers outlive nondrinkers, or so the studies show. But nondrinkers are not all created equal, and that along with other factors makes it difficult to draw firm inferences about healthy drinking. For example, an oft-cited problem is what is called the “sick quitter” hypothesis, which holds that among the nondrinkers are those with a history of problem drinking. Their health having already suffered, the comparison may be unfair by lumping them in with healthier folks who abstain for religious or other personal reasons. Moderate wine drinkers may differ socioeconomically or in other important demographic variables. Anti-alcohol advocates are quick to point out such problems with population studies. So while there are several studies showing greater average lifespan in wine drinkers, more needs to be done. One good study out this summer may give comfort to wine drinkers and help dispel some of the critics. The project, a joint effort of Stanford University and the University of ...

The paper today featured a full-page ad exhorting us to drink responsibly over the Labor Day weekend, good advice to be sure. The main point was an emphasis on the equivalency of different forms of drinking in terms of the total amount of alcohol: One 12-oz beer = one cocktail = one 5-oz glass of wine. Perhaps the thinking is that people lose track of the true amount they are consuming with lower-alcohol beverages. Just a couple of beers or a few glasses of wine, not like hitting the hard liquor, right? The tagline was “It’s not just what you drink, it’s how much.” Useful information I suppose but perhaps an oversimplification when it comes to wine, as we have seen so many times before. My advice here would be to look at the question of not just how much you drink, but how you drink. Beer may be consumed with meals but is marketed as a “party” drink, or refreshment while watching TV or sporting events. Historically (and I mean a very long time ago) it was considered to be a sort of ...

Before we delve into this too deeply, keep in mind that the answer might be neither one. Resveratrol, the antioxidant polyphenol from red wine that I dubbed the “miracle molecule” in my book, has had an interesting career. It first came into the spotlight in the early 1990’s following the “French paradox” story on the CBS-TV show “60 Minutes” as a potential explanation for the effect. Research attention ramped up quickly, and there seemed to be no end to the list of beneficial properties on health and longevity. The real breakthrough was the discovery that resveratrol was an activator of an enzyme called sirtuin, responsible for a specific metabolic change associated with dramatically increased longevity. Overnight an obscure field of biochemistry research blossomed into a massive supplement industry. But an interesting thing happened on the way to the marketplace. The scientist who is credited with the discovery of resveratrol’s sirtuin-activating abilities, Christoph Westphal, par...

Leave it to those crazy Canadians to come up with the idea of feeding wine to beef cattle. While so many stockyards are filled with cows standing knee-deep in their own droppings, bloated from a corn-based diet, these bovine bon vivants are sipping red wine and eating organic. According to Jandince Ravndahl of Sezmu Meats in British Columbia, “They moo at one another a little more and seem more relaxed. There are a few that lap it up out of the pail. After they've had it for a while, when they see us coming with the pitchers, they don't run, but they come faster than usual.” Do pre-marinated cows make healthier beef? Apparently it is at least more tender and has a sweeter taste, though I have not had the opportunity to try it myself. I can however think of many reasons why it would be healthier. Pairing red wine with beef has a specific health advantage, in that the iron in the hemoglobin – this is what makes red meat red – is a potent oxidant neatly counteracted by red wine...

A number of convoluted laws came into place following prohibition, many of which are based on the same faulty reasoning that led to curbs on alcohol sales in the first place. Although wine remained somewhat available during prohibition (people took a lot of sacramental wine it seems), a ban on direct shipping to consumers remained for a number of years. These regulations varied from state to state, with many states allowing wineries to ship directly to their customers within the state, but gradually a system of reciprocity between states with such allowances developed and was confirmed in a 2005 Supreme Court ruling. An echo of prohibition rang out this year however with the proposal in Congress (H.R. 5034) to ban such sales. Unsurprisingly, the bill was put forth by wholesalers, who would stand to lose by being bypassed. But rather than draw attention to the real reasons behind the proposal, the lobbying campaign in support of it trots out the same tired public health arguments tha...

There is a chapter in my book “Age Gets Better with Wine” called “Wine is a Food” because what I found in my research for the book that having wine with meals is key to unlocking its healthful properties. There is no question that people use food as a drug, hence the term “comfort food.” I would even make the case that. Given the epidemic of morbid obesity, the effects of food abuse far outweigh those of alcohol abuse. So if wine is indeed a food, what is the recommended daily allowance? Though authorities have long shied away from explicitly recommending that people drink wine for better health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently updated its policy recommendations to reflect the ever-increasing evidence of wine’s health benefits. Notably, mentions of the benefits of moderate drinking have begun to replace the admonishments about the ill effects of alcohol abuse. These two drinking patterns are distinct and separate, though it seems to have taken some time to reach the poin...