Is white wine healthy for you?!
Answers: I always hear that red wine is healthy for you, but what about white wine? Why is red wine so healthy?
Red is much better. It comes with all kinds of antioxidants and a few other good things that white doesn't.
But any alcohol in small quantities is. They all help with cholesterol.
Not really, Red is better as it's rich in antioxidants, and high in cancer-fighting flavonoids. White wine doesn't have any "nutritional" value at all.
It turns out that any alcoholic beverage will do the trick, as far as helping with cholesterol. I read about it in some detail, and was surprised to find out why we always assumed it was red wine.
The story goes that the French population has historically had lower cholesterol, and the French population has historically had red wine with meals. The two were linked. As it turns out, it's not just the red wine, but the serving of alcohol.
From WebMD.com:
Is Moderate Drinking Beneficial to the Heart?
At this point, doctors aren't sure. Research is ongoing to clarify the relationship of alcohol and the heart. However, findings in recent years suggest that moderate alcohol consumption (wine or beer) does offer some protection against heart disease for some people. Moderate drinking is defined as no more than one drink per day for women or lighter weight persons and no more than two drinks per day for men. One drink is equal to the following: 12 ounces of beer or wine cooler, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor.
*****end of citation*****
Alcohol raises the body's levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the good cholesterol that keeps the arteries free of dangerous buildups.
The recommendation is 1 or 2 servings for a male and 1 serving for a female per day.
I asked my doctor about this, and she said that as a doctor, she would not normally urge someone to drink alcohol, but yes, she was in line with the belief that the one or two servings could be good for heart health.
Some doctors however are uneasy about recommending alcohol to patients, because of the possibilities of addiction and the possible negative affects that addiction could bring.
I'm going to cite one article, however it is not the original one I read.
That is an exaggerated fact; it would be impossible to consume in one day the amount you'd need to get any nutritional benefit from it. There is suppose to be out on the market soon, a pill with the tannins or whatever it is, in it.
It's pretty well established that red wine (not white) is a particularly rich source of antioxidants flavonoid phenolics; many studies to uncover a cause for red wine's effects have focused on its phenolic constituents, specifically resveratrol and the flavonoids. Resveratrol, found in grape skins and seeds, increases HDL (the good kind) cholesterol and help prevent blood clotting. A study published by the Journal of Carcinogenesis reported that lab rat fed Resveratrol developed prostate tumors at a much lower rate than mice fed on a normal diet. Flavonoids, also found in dark chocolate and other foods, exhibit antioxidant properties helping prevent blood clots and plaques formation in arteries.
According to a May 20th, 2002 article published in Science Daily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...
Drinking wine appears to be good for the lungs, a University at Buffalo study has shown, and in this case, the primary credit goes to white wine rather than red.
In research presented here today (May 20, 2002) at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society, Holger Schunemann, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine and social and preventive medicine in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, reported that drinking wine recently and over a lifetime was associated with better lung function.
The study found no association between lung function and total amount of alcohol consumed (some previous studies had found a negative effect), nor between lung health and alcohol from beer, wine coolers or liquor.
"This finding may indicate that nutrients in wine are responsible for the positive effect of alcoholic beverages on lung function," said Schunemann. "Red wine in moderation has been shown to be beneficial for the heart, but in this case the relationship was stronger for white wine."
UB researchers conducted the study in a random sample of 1,555 white and African-American residents of Western New York. They collected comprehensive information about current and lifetime alcohol consumption and lifestyle habits, including diet, and took body measurements.
All participants performed standard lung-function tests, which measured the volume of air they could expel in one breath -- referred to as forced vital capacity (FVC) -- and the volume forcibly expelled in one second (FEV1).
To assess alcohol consumption, researchers defined those who had fewer than 12 drinks during their lifetime as "never drinkers" and those who were drinkers but had consumed no alcohol in the past month as "non-current drinkers." The remaining "current drinkers" reported the type of alcoholic beverage they drank and how often, the size of each drink, patterns of consumption and how often they drank more than usual.
Analysis of participants' demographic information and alcohol consumption data revealed some interesting relationships:
-- Beer only drinkers were younger, predominately male, drank more daily and over their lifetimes, and were more likely to smoke than other participants
-- Liquor-only drinkers were heavier, based on body mass index, than others
-- The groups of wine only, liquor only and recent abstainers included more women than men
-- Those who drank wine only or various alcoholic beverages had the highest education level
-- Wine drinkers had the highest levels of protective antioxidants in their blood
Analysis of all of the alcohol consumption variables with lung function showed that both recent and lifetime intake of wine had the strongest association with FEV1 and FVC, Schunemann said, an effect likely linked to wine's antioxidant properties.
"Evidence suggests that alcohol may increase the oxidative burden," he noted, "but there is a large body of evidence showing that wine contains antioxidants such as flavinoids and phenols. We also have shown that both dietary levels and blood serum levels of antioxidants are linked to lung health and function. We think that the antioxidants in wine account for our current findings."
Additional contributors to the study were Brydon J.B. Grant, M.D., and Deepa Kudalkar, M.D., from UB's Department of Medicine; Jo L. Freudenheim, Ph.D., Paola Muti, M.D., Ph.D., Susan McCann, Ph.D., Malathi Ram, Ph.D., and Maurizio Trevisan, M.D., of UB's Department of Social and Preventive Medicine; Tom Nochajski, Ph.D., of UB's Research Institute on Addictions, and Marcia Russell, Ph.D., of the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley, Calif.
The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Ralph Hochstetter Medical Research Fund (Buswell Fellowship) at UB and Research for Health in Erie County.
So in the long run it looks like wines, red or white, are just plain good old healthy fun, so drink up folks! But remember too much of a good thing can be bad as well. To quote Aristotle, “Moderation in all things.”
Both wines are good for you, the thing with alcoholic beverages is moderation. If you drink more than two glasses per day, then the damage you are doing to your liver is more important than the benefits you get from it.
From what I know, red wine and white wine differ in the kind of grape that is used for the beverage. I think the wine that comes from red grapes have Resveratrol, a powerful antioxidant. The thing is, you'd have to drink several bottles a day to get as much Resveratrol as those mice in the lab did.