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The use of wine and our strong convictions of its health benefits, teetotalers and teetotalers notwithstanding, are probably as old as wine itself and date 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 ailments. The drugs 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 combined wine with animal parts to invent medicines 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 to treat 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 death rate of convicts and migrants who were treated with wine on board ships bound for Australia in the early 1800s, vineyards and wineries were founded by British doctors in the rest of the territory. century. Many of these wineries have grown into global businesses responsible for some of the largest wine productions 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 evils of alcohol took root in societies, wine, its health benefits and sociological impacts became highly controversial and spawned the movement of Temperance Against Alcohol in Colonial America. In 1916, the federal health authorities removed alcohol from the 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 that outlawed the manufacture, sale, import, and distribution of alcohol, which lasted until 1933 when the Twenty-First Amendment was ratified to repeal the National Ban. . During Prohibition, the consumption of alcohol and homemade wine for personal use was still allowed, although each state and often cities or counties were allowed to implement more control according to local needs. Wine for sacramental and medicinal uses was also exempt. In Canada, the provinces had already started implementing prohibitive laws in 1917.
Much research has been documented on the health benefits of wine, especially since the 19th century. But the temperance movement had been strong and gained renewed momentum in the 1980s by championing the ills of alcohol in public health. 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 drug awareness campaign. “Just say no” drugs, 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 long-time strong advocate for alcohol. He led the offensive responsible for implementing (in 1988) the now-familiar warning on the labels of all wines sold in the U.S. ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, now the Bureau of Taxes and Commerce Alcohol and Tobacco, or TTB) 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 affects your ability to drive a car or operate machinery and can cause health problems.
But there was a major change in 1991 when French scientist Dr. Serge Renaud published his theory of the French paradox, 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 industrialized countries. despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats found, for example, in eggs, dairy products and particularly in cheese and meat. Renaud’s work catapulted red wine sales in the US and a renewed interest in the health benefits of wine when CBS broadcast his French paradox TV segment activated 60 minutes that same year. The French paradox, countless epidemiological studies, and laboratory studies and experiments, such as those of renowned Kaiser-Permanente cardiologist Dr. Arthur Klatsky, make a strong case for asserting J- or U-shaped relationships between drug use. alcohol and death rate. More specifically, these have shown that moderate alcohol consumption resulted in a lower death rate compared to abstainers and abstainers or heavy drinkers of alcohol. In addition, moderate consumption has also been associated with a lower morbidity (disease) rate.
Moderate consumption is generally defined to represent 14 g of pure alcohol (ethanol) per day that 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 alcohol with forty percent alcohol. And to enjoy and maximize the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption, consumption should be daily and should not be averaged, for example, drinking seven times the recommended amount at a Saturday night party, and should be part of a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle that includes regular exercise.
Starting in 1999, wine destined for the US market could be labeled by TTB approval with a directional health-related statement instructing consumers “to consult [their] Family Physician 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 advocates of temperance 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, encouraging consumers to drink more. After all, the whole premise of alcohol control is that wine, beer, and distilled spirits have been considered intoxicating beverages and not medicines.
The wine industry, with the support of trade organizations like the Wine Institute and the American Vintners Association (AVA), lobbied federal agencies for more substantive health-related disclosures and reached a compromise of sorts. Hereafter, under the authority of the Federal Alcohol Administration Act (FAA), the new TTB regulations stipulate 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 people to whom the claim applies; adequately discloses the health risks associated with moderate and higher 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 advertisements, particularly that the claims must contain a disclaimer “warning consumers that the claim should not encourage consumption. of alcohol for health reasons, … “According to Richard Mendelson in From dear to devil: a legal history of wine in the United States, TTB has not approved a single health claim since the regulation went into effect.
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 conflicting findings and the breadth of ailments, illnesses and ailments on which the wine is based. it is believed to have effects. The list ranges from heart disease, stroke, cancer, dementia including Alzheimer’s disease, type 2 diabetes to arthritis and osteoporosis, and yes, even erectile dysfunction, just to name a few. But naturally, a lot of attention has been paid to cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.
In future articles, we will examine the science of the complex interactions between wine and health that are so close and dear to our hearts, literally.