wine and health

A quick glance at statistics on alcohol abuse in American colleges and universities reveals a huge problem, and I believe that tackling the issue will require a new and perhaps controversial strategy. Various approaches have failed, so in this “back to school” edition I take a look at the question and offer a sensible, if counterintuitive, alternative. The majority of young people who choose to drink need to be taught that there is such a thing as healthy drinking. The drinking 101 curriculum has to include “how drinking can be healthy” and not just “don’t drink.” First the numbers: According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, as many as 1800 students die each year from alcohol-related causes. More than a half million more are injured while drunk, and tens of thousands become victims of sexual assault attributable to alcohol.  Tellingly, more than half of the 80% of students who consume alcohol engage in binge drinking, and this lies at the heart of most ...

Even as the silent epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease grows, wine’s positive if seemingly unlikely effects on brain health continue to offer a map toward a solution. It’s long been known from lifestyle surveys that wine drinking is a defining characteristic of the lowest risk group for Alzheimer’s (AD).* In fact, without exception regular wine consumption is the only factor that features in every study across the board. But given that alcohol is neurotoxic, it just didn’t seem to make sense. The resveratrol promise tested Resveratrol, the anti-aging miracle molecule in wine, offered a plausible explanation. Laboratory and animal studies showed that resveratrol works in several specific ways to counteract the noxious effects on brain cells of protein plaques called ß-amyloid, a marker for AD. While the role of ß-amyloid in the pathogenesis of AD is still not completely clear, it is evident that with enough resveratrol the formation of the plaques can be suppressed, and health of ...

Liberty and wine (apologies to Delacroix and Bartholdi for taking a few liberties  . . .) How diminished access to affordable wine factored in to both the American and French revolutions There are more than a few parallels between the French and American revolutions: Both are commemorated by holidays in July, (Independence Day on the 4th and Bastille Day the 14th), the same national colors, and similarly spurred by corrupt royal rule and unfair taxation. In both countries, access to affordable everyday wine played a significant role. Though not widely recognized, the liberation of the Bastille was not the first major act of the insurrection in France, but rather the storming of the customs offices at the gates of Paris where increased taxes on wine had been imposed. And while the Boston Tea party marked a significant escalation of protests against taxation without representation on British subjects in the colonies, it was wine they really relied upon for their day-to day ...

Actually neither beer nor wine was the first fermented beverage, and wine arguably has a closer connection to health, but recent evidence indicates that humans developed the ability to metabolize alcohol long before we were even human. The uniquely human ability to handle alcohol comes from the digestive enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, or ADH4. A new science called paleogenetics identifies the emergence of the modern version of the ADH4 gene in our ape ancestors some 10 million years ago. Interestingly, this corresponds to the time when our arboreal forebears transitioned to a nomadic lifestyle on the ground. We went from swinging from tree limbs to walking upright, and the rest is history. Understanding the circumstances that led to perpetuation of the ADH4 mutation may contain clues to what made us human in the first place. How the ability to metabolize alcohol made us human Paleogenetecist Matthew Carrigan has an idea about how this happened . Arboreal species rely on fruit tha...

It has become common to think of the antioxidant molecule resveratrol as the main beneficial ingredient in wine, but a new study sheds light on how resveratrol without the other components of wine might actually be a bad thing. Sure, resveratrol is a miracle molecule, providing a plausible explanation for many of the health benefits of moderate drinking: lower odds of diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, even longer life by activation of longevity genes. I leaned heavily on these findings in the book. But what I didn’t anticipate was that resveratrol would become such a hugely popular supplement, and in many people’s minds it became a proxy for wine. If a study showed some failing of resveratrol in a laboratory study, it was put out as a denunciation of healthy drinking. Or when it showed some positive effect in mice, it was hailed as proof that resveratrol had all the benefits of wine – without the alcohol. Both are oversimplifications. Resveratrol works best when combined with othe...

Whenever the topic of biodynamic winemaking comes up, I can’t help but remember a line from Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast: “They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.” Many consider biodynamics to be a joke, with its cultish origins and literal reliance on manure (packed into a cow’s horn, which must be precisely oriented to “preserve the etheric and astral force that the horn was accustomed to when it was on the cow,” buried over the winter, then sprayed on the vineyards in the spring). Nevertheless, biodynamics has been adopted by wineries worldwide including a few top labels, and some superb wines come from biodynamic vineyards. Is there a kernel of truth germinating beneath the pile of plop? Biodynamic winemaking's controversial past If biodynamics were as simple as using natural fertilizers and fostering a healthy ecosystem ...

     A very large review out recently has experts proclaiming that we had it all wrong in believing that moderate drinking was a good thing. As I so often do, I cast a dissenting vote on this one, and offer an alternative (and possible more accurate) interpretation.      This latest study, from the University of Victoria in Canada, is impressive in scope and has been widely reported. In it, Tim Stockwell, study author and the director of the Center for Addictions Research of British Columbia, questions the long-established J-shaped curve which demonstrates that moderate drinkers are healthier and outlive nondrinkers and heavy drinkers. He cites what is termed the “abstainer bias,” meaning that people who choose to abstain from alcohol are different than people who quit drinking because of health reasons. Another term for this is the “sick quitter” hypothesis. The result of lumping sick quitters with never drinkers together is a skew toward poor health i...