Is red wine good for health?

Taste and health do not always go together, but for a long time, red wine seemed to be among the beverages where they did. Wine had been touted as a health drink in moderation for centuries, if not millennia, but in the 1980s evidence began to emerge about its heart benefits. Nearly four decades later, medical researchers are not so sure.

Red wine became a hot topic of research in the 1990s, when medical researchers began to suspect that red wine was responsible for the low incidence of heart disease among the French. The French smoked a lot and ate fatty food, and still had lower levels of heart disease compared to other countries. They thought that alcohol was good in moderation. And they found an antiageing compound called resveratrol in wine.

Since then, many studies showed a health benefit to drinking wine, some others showed a health benefit to any type of alcohol in moderation, while some others did not show a benefit at all. Red wine could still reduce heart disease risk for some people, but it also increases cancer risk and hence not worth the trouble in the end.

Also Read: Myths about Indian diet - The link between food & heart disease is complicated

It is hard to do a rigorous study on red wine in the established manner except by asking one group of people to drink and the other to not drink. Its ethics is questionable, as alcohol can become addictive.

It is also hard to separate the effects of alcohol from other lifestyle choices of individuals.

Moreover, genetics seems to play a major role in how alcohol acts on the body. Would Indians have the right genes for drinking alcohol? There is not enough evidence to pronounce a judgement.