Earlier in the quarter, we discussed how wine consumption increased as studies came out saying that red wine was healthy in small quantities. Reading the WSJ, I came across a (pretty bad) article that claims to have identified new health risks associated with wine. If these risks are reported widely, we have to wonder how it could affect wine consumption.
The article claims that many women don't drink red wine because it is a migraine trigger. As a result, they steer clear of red and only drink white wine. The scientific evidence in the article seems mixed, with one doctor noting that it is unclear why that would be a side effect more often experienced by women.
Additionally, the article claims that drinking alcohol causes melanoma and that the effect is most pronounced for women drinking white wine.
The article does note that scientific research on the health effects of wine has been extremely limited. This raises two questions--How will scientific claims about wine change consumption moving forward? Should industry groups be championing their own studies to contradict health risks/tout the health benefits in much the same way other food and beverage producers do today?
Thanks for the interesting read, Jasmine. This reminded me of an article I saw a couple weeks ago that goes the other direction, claiming reduced risk of dementia as a new potential health benefit of red wine consumption: http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/Red-Wine-Consumption-Could-Fight-Dementia
ReplyDeleteA quick Google of "new study wine health" shows frequent articles, often with click-baity headlines, discussing the results of new studies on the health effects of wine. These studies appear to go one of two ways: either disproving the "myth" that wine is good for you, or espousing some new and undiscovered health benefit.
I almost wonder if there's too much noise in the space for any one of these studies to be taken seriously enough to gain traction and actually influence consumption habits.