The French correction?
The long-held notion that the cheese- and butter-lovin’ French enjoy relatively low rates of heart disease because they drink red wine is misguided, new research proclaims, as are the studies that suggest moderate drinking leads to a longer, healthier life.
“There is simply no completely ‘safe’ level of drinking,” insists lead researcher Tim Stockwell, a scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria.
Stockwell and his buzzkill team assessed 107 published studies that explored the link between drinking habits and longevity.
When they combined the data, it seemed like people who consumed up to two drinks a day had a 14% lower risk of dying during the study period compared to teetotalers.
Upon further review, the researchers realized the studies tended to focus on older adults and failed to distinguish between lifelong abstainers and former drinkers who quit or reduced their boozin’ because they developed health problems.
“If you look at the weakest studies,” Stockwell said, “that’s where you see health benefits.”
“Higher quality” research included participants younger than 55 and didn’t count occasional and ex-drinkers as nondrinkers.
In those cases, moderate drinking was not linked to a longer life.
Stockwell said drinking once or twice a day actually increases the risk of certain cancers, including breast, throat and colorectal cancer.
Stockwell’s findings were published Thursday in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
He is not the first researcher to pooh-pooh the “French Paradox” — a term that dates back to the 1980s.
Dr. Kenneth Mukamal, an internist at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said in 2020 that the French-fueled argument that red wine is good for your heart is pretty weak.
Mukamal pointed out that Japan boasts lower heart disease rates than France even as the Japanese prefer beer and sake to red wine. French doctors were also accused of underreporting coronary deaths.
In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that women limit themselves to one drink a day and men to two drinks a day.
A drink is defined as a 12-ounce bottle or can of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine or a 1.5-ounce shot of liquor.
