The World Health Organisation and all the public health authorities have been slowly reducing the ‘safe drinking guidelines’ for years. It’s a global conspiracy…not an actual conspiracy but an unspoken risk-aversion state of mind which pervades all public health thinking. Their approach is “If there’s any chance of harm, we’d better warn people”. Okay but we would argue that everyone already knows alcohol in excess is not good for you. Your body tells you that if you drink too much. You see the consequences of excessive alcohol consumption in the news, you can’t miss it. What’s not so obvious is the benefits to your health of moderate wine consumption. The social benefits of enjoying a glass of wine with a meal and friends is apparent but maybe not the medical benefits. We want to push back against all the negative health news about drinking to say, wait a minute, what about the health benefits? The authorities don’t tell you about them. You only hear the bad news. What happened to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Then we came across a new book titled “The very good news about wine” written by Tony Edwards.
It had been well reviewed, so we bought a copy on Amazon. Wow, this book is a revelation. It’s such a relief from all the negative stuff. We started getting excited from the first pages. Clearly this guy is credible, with a background as an award-winning science and medical journalist for the BBC. And he’s done a lot of work, summarizing 50 years of research on the effects of alcohol/wine on health for this book. And it’s not all bad news at all. On the contrary. He provides detail on all aspects of wine and health, from cancer (tackled in the first chapter which he titles ‘The Big C’) where the news is mixed but not all bad; to heart disease, diabetes, dementia and weight where the news is mostly very positive. Hallelujah! Why aren’t we told these things? We only get the dire health warnings.
People may say we have a biased view because we’re winemakers but all we’re asking for is to present the positives as well as the negatives when reporting the research. Then we’ll have both sides of the story and we can make our own informed decisions. Anyone who’s interested in wine and their health will learn some surprising things from this book and it’s an entertaining read too. We highly recommend it.