Wine and Health – An Introduction

The use of wine and our strong convictions of its health benefits, teetotalers and teetotalers notwithstanding, are probably as old as wine itself, dating back to the earliest civilizations of the ancient world. In Mesopotamia ca. In the third millennium BC, the Babylonians believed that wine had medicinal and therapeutic effects and was considered so pure and free from contamination that it was preferred, along with beer, to water. In Ancient Egypt, more than two thousand years before Christ, wine also became a common ingredient in “prescription drugs” to cure a variety of foods. Medicines were also formulated using other ingredients, such as water and, in particular, those derived from medicinal plants.

And stories abound from the Far East where the Chinese mixed wine with animal parts to concoct drugs to cure almost any ailment. Even Hippocrates, the father of medicine who had a keen sense of physiological and metabolic reactions in the human body, not only used wine as a prescription medicine in ancient Greece, but also made it an antiseptic for treating wounds. .

The link between wine and its medicinal and therapeutic benefits was strengthened throughout the different eras and from the Middle Ages to modern times. So compelling was the link that, following the decline in the mortality rate of convicts and immigrants who were treated with wine aboard ships bound for Australia in the early 19th century, it led to the founding of vineyards and wineries. by British doctors in the rest of the century. century. Many of these wineries have become global businesses responsible for some of the largest wine production in the world. For example, Lindemans and Penfolds were founded in the early 1840s by Drs. Henry J. Lindeman and Christopher R. Penfold, respectively.

But as wine became an integral part of religions since biblical times and the ills of alcohol took root in societies, wine, its health benefits and sociological impacts became highly controversial and spawned the temperance movement. against alcohol in colonial America. In 1916, federal health authorities removed alcohol from United States Pharmacopeia (USP), “the official public authority that sets standards for all prescription and over-the-counter drugs and other health care products manufactured or sold in the United States.” Then in 1920 the Volstead Act was enacted under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which made the manufacture, sale, importation and distribution of illegal alcohol last until 1933 when the Twenty-First Amendment was ratified to repeal National Prohibition . During Prohibition, the consumption of alcohol and home-made wine for personal use was still permitted, although greater control was left to individual states and often towns or counties to implement according to local needs. Wine for sacramental and medicinal uses was also exempt. In Canada, the provinces had already begun to implement prohibitive laws in 1917.

Much research on the health benefits of wine has been documented particularly since the 19th century. But the temperance movement had been strong, gaining renewed momentum in the 1980s by championing the public health ills of alcohol. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), a now highly influential organization, was first founded in 1980. Then, during Ronald Reagan’s first presidential term in the 1980s, First Lady Nancy Reagan launched the Drunk Driving Awareness Campaign. drugs “Just Say No” which naturally included alcoholic beverages. . Senator James Strom Thurmond, whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver in 1993 and whose wife later became addicted to alcohol, was a longtime advocate of fighting alcohol. He led the offensive responsible for implementing (in 1988) the now-familiar warning on the labels of all wines sold in the US.) The text reads as follows:

GOVERNMENT WARNING: (1) According to the Surgeon General, women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy due to the risk of birth defects. (2) Drinking alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery and may cause health problems.

But there was a major twist in 1991 when French scientist Dr. Serge Renaud went public with his French paradox theory which observed that the French suffer from a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD), which is the leading cause of death in the United States. industrialized. despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats found, for example, in eggs, dairy products and, in particular, cheese and meat. Renaud’s work catapulted red wine sales in the US and renewed interest in the health benefits of wine when CBS aired his french paradox television segment in 60 minutes that same year. The French paradox, countless epidemiological studies, and laboratory studies and experiments, such as those by renowned Kaiser-Permanente cardiologist Dr. Arthur Klatsky, make a strong case for J- or U-shaped relationships between alcohol consumption and the mortality rate. More specifically, these have shown that moderate alcohol consumption resulted in a lower mortality rate compared to abstainers and abstainers or heavy alcohol drinkers. In addition, moderate consumption has also been linked to a lower rate of morbidity (illness).

Moderate consumption is generally defined as 14 g of pure alcohol (ethanol) per day which can be obtained from 148 ml (5 fl oz) of wine with twelve percent alcohol – watch out for the “two glasses a day” guideline – or 355 mL (12 fl oz) of beer with five percent alcohol or 44 mL (1½ fl oz) of liquor with forty percent alcohol. And to enjoy and maximize the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption, consumption should be daily and not average, for example drinking seven times the recommended amount at a Saturday night party, and should be part of a diet balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle that includes regular exercise.

Beginning in 1999, wine destined for the US market could be labeled by TTB approval with a directional health-related statement directing consumers to “consult [their] family doctor on the health benefits of wine consumption” or to request publication from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) Dietary Guidelines for Americans “to know the health effects of wine consumption”. But Senator Thurmond and temperance advocates like the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and MADD struck again and effectively forced the TTB in 2003 to defeat directional statements on labels on the grounds that they were inherently misleading and confusing and gave the impression that the government endorsed the health benefits of alcohol consumption, thereby encouraging consumers to drink more. After all, the whole premise of alcohol control is that wine, beer, and distilled spirits have all been considered intoxicating beverages and not drugs.

The wine industry, supported by trade organizations such as the Wine Institute and the American Vintners Association (AVA), lobbied federal agencies for more substantive health-related claims and reached a compromise of sorts. Henceforth, under the authority of the Federal Alcohol Administration Act (FAA Act), the new TTB regulations provided in part that:

A specific health claim on a label or in an advertisement is considered misleading unless the claim is true and adequately supported by scientific evidence; duly detailed and qualified with respect to the categories of persons to which the claim applies; adequately discloses the health risks associated with moderate and high levels of alcohol consumption; and describes the categories of people for whom any level of alcohol consumption can cause health risks.

Such requirements have made it nearly impossible to obtain approval to include directional or substantive health claims on labels or in advertisements, in particular that the claims must contain a disclaimer “warning consumers that the claim should not encourage the consumption of alcohol for health reasons,… “According to Richard Mendelson in From Darling to Devil: A Legal History of Wine in Americanot a single health claim has been approved by the TTB since the regulation came into force.

But there is hope. There has been great progress in the last decade in the health benefits of moderate wine consumption. Although we, with the exception of anti-alcohol advocates, have been thirsty for more good news about the role of wine in our health, the research is far from conclusive given the often contradictory findings and the variety of ailments, diseases and illnesses on which the wine is based. it is believed to have effects. The list ranges from heart disease, stroke, cancer, dementia including Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes to arthritis and osteoporosis, and yes, even erectile dysfunction, just to name a few. But naturally, much of the attention has been focused on cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.

In future articles, we will examine the science of the complex interactions between wine and health that are so near and dear to our hearts, literally.