POV: You read somewhere that drinking red wine is actually good for health and now you’re happily cracking open a bottle of Merlot. Before you know it, you’ve polished off the whole thing but then you remember the above diktat and it’s all no harm, no foul.
However, that’s not completely true. According to Dr. Kenneth Mukamal, an internist at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the evidence that drinking red wine is good for your health, especially heart health, is rather weak. Speaking to Harvard Health, he says: “All of the research showing that people who drink moderate amounts of alcohol have lower rates of heart disease is observational. Such studies can’t prove cause and effect, only associations.”
The notion that unlike other alcohol, red wine is actually good for your health is referred to as the French Paradox, a term coined in the late 1980s. The French Paradox stands by the idea that the low rates of heart disease among the French may be due to their proclivity for drinking wine, despite their fondness for cheese and other fatty foods.
This argument was given weightage by the discovery of polyphenols, beneficial plant compounds that help heart health, in red and purple grape skins. Furthermore, the Mediterranean diet, which has been proven to ward off heart attacks and strokes, also features red wine.
However, according to Dr. Mukamal, these theories don’t hold value. Here’s breaking it all
down.
Decoding the French Paradox
Ever since the late 1980s, when this notion was first formulated, several experts deep-dived into its connotations and derived the conclusion that several other factors could be responsible for the lack of heart diseases among the French at the time. This refers to other facets of their daily lifestyle habits and dietary differences. A clear-cut example of this, says Dr. Mukamal, is that the rate of heart disease in Japan is lower than in France, but the Japanese are known to drink a lot of beer and hardly any red wine.
Are polyphenols in red wine good for the heart?
One of the greatest compounds in the polyphenols found in red wine is resveratrol, which is projected as a heart-protecting and anti-aging supplement. However, as Dr. Mukamal tells Harvard Health, resveratol’s positive impact on heart health in humans is yet to be proven. In fact, a 2014 study conducted among men and women above 65 years of age in the Chianti region of Italy, whose daily diets were rich in resveratrol, found no link between the resveratrol levels and rates of heart disease.
How much red wine can you consume in a day?
Going by Harvard’s extensive research on the subject, one should not drink more than 5 ounces (one serving) of red wine in a day. In terms of other sorts of alcohol like whisky and vodka, one drink a day for a healthy woman and two drinks a day for a healthy man is generally considered safe. Remember, moderation is key… no matter what you’re pouring into your glass.
