The Surprising Health Benefits of Wine with Tony Edwards, Author of The Very Good News About Wine

Natalie MacLean
Oct30th

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Introduction

Have the health risks of moderate wine consumption been grossly overstated? How does moderate wine consumption reduce heart disease? What is the ideal amount and pattern of wine consumption for maximum health benefits, and how does it differ between men and women?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with author Tony Edwards.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

Giveaway

Three of you will win a copy of his terrific new book, The Very Good News About Wine.

 

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To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’ve posted a review of the podcast.

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Highlights

  • How did an early morning wine tasting surprise Tony?
  • How did Tony’s experience as a BBC producer and a medical columnist shape his approach to researching and writing about wine?
  • Why does Tony believe the glycemic index is more accurate than the calorie theory for measuring food values?
  • What impact does alcohol have on your insulin response?
  • What does research show about the benefits of dry wine for diabetics?
  • What motivated Tony to revisit the topic of alcohol and health a decade after his first book, The Good News About Booze?
  • Which aspects of synthesizing decades of research on wine and health did Tony find most challenging?
  • Why was wine prescribed in UK hospitals and by physicians during the Prohibition era in North America?
  • What is the ideal amount and pattern of wine consumption for maximum health benefits?
  • How does the J-curve demonstrate the extent of the health benefits of wine for heart health and diabetes?
  • Does the alcohol in wine influence its health benefits?
  • What are the health implications of non-alcoholic wines compared to moderate consumption of regular wine?

 

Key Takeaways

  • Have the health risks of moderate wine consumption been grossly overstated?
    • As Tony explains, the alcohol consumption guidelines are completely the inverse of what the evidence says. His first book was a real kind of kick in the teeth to the medical establishment, as he showed very, very clearly that small amounts of alcohol are very good for you, whereas large amounts are not. While the guidelines were being increasingly reduced, he thought, this is ridiculous. Wine is good for you in moderation. He wondered why the guidelines were being reduced to a level that actually no one benefits from moderate wine consumption. Study after study shows wine is really good news.
  • How does moderate wine consumption reduce heart disease?
    • Tony observes that it’s actually the collection of polyphenols in wine that have the beneficial effect rather than simply resveratrol alone, which itself is one of possibly 1,000 polyphenols in red wine, the reason why it offers the most health benefits. It’s the interaction of these polyphenols with each other that produces a benefit.
  • What is the ideal amount and pattern of wine consumption for maximum health benefits, and how does it differ between men and women?
    • Tony notes that a study in 2018 came to the conclusion that for men, the maximum optimum intake of wine per day was 60 grams, which is about two-thirds of the bottle, and for women, half that. Beyond that level the health benefits diminish until the health risks escalate. The major differentiating factor between men and women is the detoxifying enzymes rather than body weight or composition. Women have fewer detoxifying enzymes. The evidence also shows that the older you are, the more beneficial moderate wine consumption becomes.

 

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In the early morning, your ability to detoxify alcohol is at its lowest. - Tony Edwards Tony Edwards Click to tweet

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Small amounts of alcohol are very good for you, whereas large amounts are not. - Tony Edwards Tony Edwards Click to tweet

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The alcohol consumption guidelines are completely the inverse of what the evidence says. - Tony Edwards Tony Edwards Click to tweet

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You have to have the alcohol with the polyphenols in wine to have the beneficial effect. - Tony Edwards Tony Edwards Click to tweet

 

About Tony Edwards

Former BBC science documentary producer/director/writer. Now specializing in medical research journalism, Tony Edwards is a former BBC TV producer/ director/ writer, with over 80 science documentaries to his credit, some winning awards from such bodies as the British Medical Association. After the BBC, he wrote on science, technology and medicine for The Sunday Times, Readers Digest, Daily Mail and a wide variety of medical magazines. He is married to the broadcaster and novelist Debbie Rix; they have two grown-up children, three hens and four cats, and live in rural Kent.

 

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  • The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.

 

Transcript

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 Have the health risks of moderate wine consumption been grossly overstated? Spoiler alert. Oh, yeah. How does moderate wine consumption reduce heart disease? Hint, it’s not resveratrol. And what is the ideal amount and pattern of wine consumption for maximum health benefits? And how does that differ between men and women? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with Tony Edwards, author of the new book, The Very Good News About Wine. By the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover how Tony’s experience as a BBC producer and a Sunday Times medical columnist shaped his approach to researching and writing about wine. Why wine was prescribed in UK hospitals and by physicians during the prohibition era in North America. Why Tony believes the glycemic index is more accurate than the calorie theory for measuring food values. The impact of alcohol on your insulin response. What research shows about the benefits of dry wine for diabetics? The most challenging aspects of synthesizing decades of research on wine and health. Why your ability to detoxify alcohol is at its lowest in the morning when many tasters believe their sensory abilities are at their highest. And how the J curve demonstrates the extent of the health benefits of wine and heart health and diabetes.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:27  Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host Natalie MacLean. And each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started.

Welcome to episode 309. Three of you are going to win a copy of Tony Edwards terrific new book, The Very Good News About Wine. I also still have two copies of our guest’s book from last week. That would be Behind the Glass The Chemical and Sensorial Terroir of Wine Tasting by Gus Zhu. All you have to do is email me and let me know that you’d like to win. I’ll choose five people randomly from those who contact me.  If you haven’t won a book yet, now’s your chance and keep listening, as my goal is to offer lots more books and prizes with every episode. Just email me at [email protected].

In other book news, if you’re reading the paperback or e-book of Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much or listening to the audiobook, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at nataliemaclean.com/309. Today’s topic is one that is close to my heart, liver and pancreas. I’ve been following the studies about wine and health for the past 20 years since tasting wine is my profession and drinking it is my passion. As a woman, I know that wine impacts my body differently from men. As a wine writer, I’ve always questioned myself am I bringing more pain or pleasure into the world? Am I enabling a dangerous habit, a potential addiction or am I sharing the drink of conversation and communion? Well, the only way to sleep at night is to believe the second. But I am encouraged to know that solid, science based evidence supports that view. Okay, on with the show.

Natalie MacLean 00:04:05 From 1973 to 1994, Tony Edwards worked as a producer at the BBC on science documentaries in the UK. He has won numerous awards for his work, including two from the British Medical Association. From 1995 onward, he moved away from film to work as a science and technology journalist for publications such as The Sunday Times and Reader’s Digest. He began to concentrate on medicine, writing for a variety of publications, including the celebrated magazine What Doctors Don’t Tell You. In 2013, he published his first book on alcohol called The Very Good News About Booze. Catchy. And in 2023, he followed that with the Very Good News About Wine, which we’ll be discussing today. And he joins us now from his home in rural Kent, which is about 50 miles south of London. Welcome, Tony. It’s so great to have you here with us.

Tony Edwards 00:05:10 Very good to be with you. Thank you.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:13 Cheers. Before we jump into our discussion, I want to note that neither Tony nor I are doctors. So none of what we discuss should be interpreted as medical advice. This is meant to be for informational purposes only. So please consult your medical professional to determine how much wine, if any, is right for you. All right, Tony, you have a story about tasting wine at eleven in the morning. Maybe share with us what happened.

Tony Edwards 00:05:39 It went very badly. Now I’m a man who can hold his drink very easily. We might get back to this later on. But at night or dinnertime, I’ll have at least half a bottle of wine at least, and sometimes more. And I can easily hold on. However, I went to a wine tasting at a local vineyard about 20 miles down the road last year or so, and it was 11:00 in the morning, and they were inviting to to us to sample their white wines. White wines, quite big in southern England now. To my surprise, they get a little tiny little glass this size. But I started to drink and I just had a little sip of it and I immediately felt woozy. I mean, really woozy. And it was, I mean, it was enough sip to sort of, better to drown or fly, you know. It was a very, very small amount of alcohol. And I thought, hang on, there something wrong with me. And I thought, hang on, there isn’t something wrong with you.  There’s something really right with me. Because one of the problems that alcoholics have, or one of the reasons that people go into alcoholism, is because they drink in the morning and in the morning is the time you get the biggest hit from alcohol, because alcohol gets detoxified at different times of the day, called circadian rhythms. In the early morning, your ability to detoxify alcohol is at its lowest and it gradually increases throughout the day. So by the time dinnertime comes around 6:00, 7:00, your enzymes, your detoxifying enzymes are at their fullest extent. And that’s how you can manage to drink a huge amount of stuff, as I do in the evening.  So that’s fantastic. The other interesting thing, too, is that Mother Nature gives us a craving for alcohol at that time of the day when it’s most able to detoxify it. So in the evenings, 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening, we tend to have they call it wine o’clock, don’t they?

Natalie MacLean 00:07:23 Yes.

Tony Edwards 00:07:25 I must have a drink.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:28 I call it Mommy’s Little Helper. I used to, I try not to make those joke now, but anyway.

Tony Edwards 00:07:34 But it’s because Mother Nature wants you to drink. It gives you a craving for a drink at that time of day. But it’s actually that time of day, the very time of day when your enzymes are able to detoxify the alcohol and most efficiently. So I think, you know, we live in a wonderful world. And here’s another example of it.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:51 Yeah, absolutely. That’s fascinating. I had never heard that before and I love it. I love it that it’s not just because I’m hangry or it’s what I call the arsenic hour. When you want to take arsenic or administer to those around you. There’s a reason Mother Nature equipped us to deal with alcohol then. All right. So how did your experience as a former BBC producer and then a medical columnist for the Sunday Times and other publications, shape your approach to researching and writing about wine?

Tony Edwards 00:08:19 At the BBC, one of the reasons I had to leave rather early, I took early retirement, was because the programs that I did were generally anti-establishment. I found lots and lots of reasons to question scientific orthodoxy, and it was okay in the 70s and 80s because we’d all come out of the university being radicals. And I gradually found that the people who were coming into the BBC and becoming more senior to me were sort of casting a snook at the kind of the stuff I was doing, which was basically anti-establishment stuff. So I had to leave. Took early retirement. So many of my programs were very anxious in the sense that I question the scientific dogma.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:00 And was that about alcohol while you were at the BBC?

Tony Edwards 00:09:03  No no no, about lots of things, including psychic functioning of telepathy, etc., etc. clairvoyance, which of course science said was completely rubbish. But actually in the 1980s in, California, a lot of work was going on behind the scenes secret work by the CIA and the Department of Defense using psychics to spy on Russia. And it was classified information. I didn’t know it then, but I was able to film the declassified information research. So, I mean, you had on the one hand science saying it’s all rubbish. It must be, you know, the idea that you can communicate with each other to telepathically or clairvoyantly to see to distance has to be rubbish because we know consciousness is within the brain and therefore it can’t be anywhere else. That’s an example of the film that I was making, the kind of films that I made that were anti-establishment. And my colleagues eventually got fed up with me and I decided I had to leave. So I then went into medical journalism ultimately where I did the same thing. Finding differences between what the orthodox medical profession was saying about the evidence and challenging it where necessary. And I did a lot of articles on cholesterol and statins and salt, all of these things that were said to be bad for you. And then I did an article on calories. Ad I originally I was quite skeptical about the calorie theory anyway, because it seemed to me very crude.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:34 The calorie theory being what?

Tony Edwards 00:10:36 Calories in. Calories out.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:38 The body as a furnace burning those calories?

Tony Edwards 00:10:42 Yes. And so I stumbled upon the fact that although alcohol is very high in calories, almost as high as fat. Yet research showed that people who drink do not put on weight through the calories. They may put on weight by the food they eat. The more food they ingest from actually while they’re drinking because it gives you the munchies. But the actual alcohol itself does not put on weight. And there were loads of experiments on animals and human beings showing precisely that. If you substitute food calories for alcohol calories in a controlled condition, you will lose weight.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:19 I’m surprised to hear that because a lot of diets say kick the wine or whatever at the beginning and alcohol is an easy fuel to burn. I don’t know, maybe that actually underscores what you’re saying rather than disagrees with it. So maybe we can clarify a little bit. Just correct me, I dropped science early in high school. Food is measured on the amount of glucose or sugar it produces, and the glycemic index indicates how quickly particular food raises blood sugar levels compared to pure glucose or sugar. Bread has a glycemic index of 100. Beer, though, has maltose and other form of sugar from wheat or barley. Has a glycemic index of 89, whereas a dry wine has a glycemic index of zero?

Tony Edwards 00:12:03 Correct. The glycemic index is the alternative theory to the category theory. In my view, it is the one most likely to be correct because what the glycemic index, as you say, measures is the glucose production, particularly food. And it is glucose that gets stored as fat if you don’t actually use the energy. So clearly that’s a much better mechanism than the category theory, which you mentioned just now, burning food they actually measure calories by burning the food in a little container called a calorimeter. So on the understanding that the body is like a furnace, you know, you put coal in it and you’ll sit, but you know, it’s absolute nonsense. Clearly nonsense because if that was the case, then we won’t be eating coal to put on weight because it’s not digestible anyway. So it’s completely nonsense. And so even today, the calories will work by putting a particular food into this bomb calorimeter, which is so antiquated. It is sort of 19th century pseudoscience.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:10 Right. And the body reacts differently depending on how the food was processed. And we know that…

Tony Edwards 00:13:15 Well of course.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:15 … things like protein or we actually burn more calories trying to consume it than we do, say, fast foods that just don’t take any effort to metabolize.

Tony Edwards 00:13:27 Well, the glycemic index is  the index that I use in the book because it’s, in my view, the one most sensible because it links up the fact that alcohol doesn’t put on weight because alcohol has zero calories in it. Sorry, zero on the glycemic index. Absolutely zero. Whereas beer, a lot of men have beer bellies. Well, that’s because of the maltose within beer. And maltose is not actually 89, as you just said, it is 120. It’s more glucose producing than sugar itself.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:03 Oh, wow. I didn’t realize that.

Tony Edwards 00:14:05 Very glucose producing. So the wine has no maltose in it as far as we know. So this is why beer is very, very special and why every culture knows that there’s a beer belly. The Germans call it bierbauch. The French call it bedaine. And, every culture knows that people who drink beer to excess get beer bellies. It’s all to do with the maltose. And all of these things sort of tie up making one recognize that the glycemic index is actually the only way to measure food values.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:36 And as you say in your book, we don’t hear about the wine belly. But some sources say – is this correct –  the body will preferentially burn alcohol first before it burns fat that we’ve stored in our cells because alcohol is such an easy, available fuel?  Is that correct or is that total bunk as well?

Tony Edwards 00:14:54 You’re using the term burn, which goes back to the bomb calorimeter, the furnace thing. So actually I think that’s the wrong way of looking at it. What is now clear is that alcohol itself is not bioavailable. In other words, the body the body doesn’t recognize it as an energy source.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:11 Okay. Okay. It just tries to process it and get it out.

Tony Edwards 00:15:15 To get stoned with.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:17 Yes [laughter] indeed. Which is very good at doing. And just further background. Insulin is secreted by the pancreas, which helps remove the glucose from the blood and deposits it into our cells, as you say, where it’s stored as either fat or used as energy. What impact does alcohol have on the ability of our insulin to do this kind of conversion?

Tony Edwards 00:15:37 Well, the interesting thing about alcohol and insulin, which is why it’s so good in diabetes, is it actually decreases the amount of insulin. Now that sounds paradoxical, but but the the the evidence is very strong that people who drink have much less risk of diabetes, considerably less risk.

Tony Edwards 00:15:57 Now, why should lower insulin be a good marker for diabetes? Because diabetes comes as a result of insulin resistance, which means which is that. But the body produces too much insulin because it can’t actually handle, the, the detoxify turning it into glucose. So the body keeps on producing more and more insulin and it gets called, ends up with the effects of insulin resistance. And, then, you know, you get really full blown diabetes. So the ideal is to have as little insulin as possible, because that means you have as little glucose, because what is not actually producing the insulin to convert the glucose. It’s a little bit paradoxical.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:42 It is, but wine is not triggering glucose. And so therefore insulin isn’t triggered to deal with the non good glucose if you will. Okay. Cool.

Tony Edwards 00:16:51 Correct. And it’s not just wine it’s all alcohol.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:54 It’s all alcohol, right. I’ve got a one track wine mind. And we should note that as we discuss these various findings that we’re talking about wine or alcohol in moderation. There are definitely negative impacts as you go into excess. But we’ll get to that later. And so in your opinion then, or in the research I should say that you’ve discovered, then moderate wine consumption can help prevent diabetes?

Tony Edwards 00:17:19 Yes, it can. But heavy does a reverse. So in our conversation. we’ll keep on finding this as a paradox. Little it’s good. Moderate is good. Too much is bad.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:31 Like anything, right. Like water consumption can make you have hypertension because, you know, raises blood pressure if you keep drinking to excess just of water itself.

Tony Edwards 00:17:39 So it actually blows your brains out too, putting water on the brain. That’s how you die from it. Basically, there’s too much water in the brain.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:46 Oh, okay. All right, we’ll be warned on water, too. Since we’re on this topic, for those who are already diabetics is dry –  we’re not talking sweet wine which does have sugar and clearly will trigger glucose and an insulin response – but for dry white and red wines or sparkling, is that quote unquote safe if there are no other contraindications for diabetics to consume?

Tony Edwards 00:18:14 It’s not only safe, it’s beneficial.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:16 It’s beneficial.

Tony Edwards 00:18:17 A lot of studies have shown that, oh, yeah, you can reduce your…

Natalie MacLean 00:18:22 Its reducing your insulin.

Tony Edwards 00:18:26 Paradox. Yeah. So a lot of studies being done in Israel on this particularly. a small glass of red wine with a meal will reduce your insulin. Anyway, it’s very good for diabetics. Small amounts of alcohol.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:41 All right. So what motivated you to revisit the whole topic of alcohol and health a decade after your first book, The Good News About Booze, you returned and have the second book, The Very Good News About Wine.

Tony Edwards 00:18:54 Well the first book I thought was a real kind of kick in the teeth to the establishment, medical establishment. As I said, very, very clearly, as I’ve just discussed, small amounts of alcohol are very good for you where large amounts are not. While the guidelines were being increasingly reduced, I thought to myself  this is ridiculous. I know the evidence. I know it  and everybody else can know it. This stuff is really good for you in moderation. Why are you reducing the guidelines to such a level that actually then no one’s going to benefit from the alcohol? And that annoyed me more and more. And then the people, particularly in England, it was in Britain on television saying there’s not only no safe level of alcohol. alcohol itself is dangerous at any level. And even people say wine is good for you. Oh, no, she said, it’s an old wives tale. I thought you’re a you’re a bloody old wife yourself.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:50 Not a childless cat lady [laughter]. Never mind.

Tony Edwards 00:19:55 I mean, she was lying through her teeth and so I thought, I, you know, there’s no point in rewriting the same book again. I’m going to concentrate the second book on wine where the evidence is really overwhelmingly positive in terms of its benefits for health. And so I got the old title, Good News about Booze, that The Very Good News About Wine. It’s a slam dunk because it’s so easy to show that wine is good for you. Time and time again, study after study after study shows this stuff is really good news. It really is good news for your health.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:30 And you differentiate between wine and other alcohols in various chapters in this excellent book. In fact, you cite over 300 medical studies in it. What was the most challenging aspect of synthesizing decades of research on wine and health?

Tony Edwards 00:20:44 I think the problem is a lot of the evidence is heterogeneous.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:49 It’s conflicting?

Tony Edwards 00:20:51 Not seriously conflicting, but some people say, you know, it’s very good if you take it and X amount. And other people say, well we didn’t found that we thought it was x minus y amount. So lots of different studies show different results. And so what you have to do is you have to synthesize all of the studies. Now that’s done for you quite easily because a lot of people do what’s called a meta analysis, where they pull together all of the information and come up with a synthesis of what the totality of the evidence says. And so what I did in the book was to, because I do like my wine, and I do like want people to know that actually it is good for you. I have concentrated on individual studies where wine is good, really good for you. For example, French women and breast cancer. I was astonished to find that they not only don’t get breast cancer when they drink wine, they reduce their risk of breast cancer. Now, that what they call an outlier in the trade. It’s an exceptionally favourable study in terms of wine and breast cancer.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:56 And how much? Much how much did they reduce their risk?

Tony Edwards 00:21:59 I think any amount actually was reduced.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:03 But I think consumption okay.

Tony Edwards 00:22:05 I mean, any amount but they had to drink regularly every day.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:08 I see okay.

Tony Edwards 00:22:10 This is another interesting thing in the book that the evidence is contrary to what the authorities  say, oh, just have 1 or 2 drinks a week and then forget it. The evidence is completely to the contrary. You really need to drink every day for maximum health. Little. Little enough. I mean, it’s an extraordinary. The guidelines are completely the inverse of what the evidence says.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:34 Absolutely.

Tony Edwards 00:22:36 In the book, I have this I’m very careful to say study X and certainly X Y  showed really these remarkably favourable results. On the other hand, looking at totality, there was this kind of outcome. And the outcome generally is in the same direction but more muted. So the meta analysis on breast cancer and wine do not show that you will reduce your risk of breast cancer when you drink, you know, 25 bottles of wine. They will not show that.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:06 And do you think there is any risk that the French study might be biased because the wine industry is so important to France, even if the wine industry didn’t fund research, which you found that consistently the alcohol industry is not funding this research. It’s coming from governments and universities. But I think France, I think, oh my God, you know, if there’s any bias, could it have been in that study at all?

Tony Edwards 00:23:29 I suppose knowing Frenchman as I do, I don’t know many French scientists personally, but I know a lot of Frenchmen. And of course, you know they all love their wine. I suppose it’s possible, you know, these are tops. So of these are, for example. I work for the equivalent of the NIH. They are top level scientists. An institution called Inserm and you generally wouldn’t find people at that sort of academic level fabricating the data. And they might have an unconscious bias. But you’ve really got to fabricate data before you start. The answer is yes, of course, Frenchmen lover their wine and no, they don’t bake their results.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:07 I think you already answered this. I was going to ask how did you check your own bias to avoid cherry picking studies that sort of go along with your own love of wine. But you’ve already said you did focus on positives, but then you compare that to the meta analysis, which would say, okay, this is a really strong positive result. And here’s how it compares to many studies grouped together under this meta analysis, so that it was always in the context of what’s happening overall. Yeah. OK. Good.  And one of the big differences between this and your first book was Google Scholar. How did it help you write this second book?

Tony Edwards 00:24:45 Well the first book. There is a medical library, a big one in London, where I was allowed to Xerox papers after papers and papers for about $5 a day and ridiculously cheap. But since then, there’s also a thing called PubMed, which did the same thing online. And then Google Scholar came along and allowed you access to every single scientific paper published since 1850. Every scientific paper in all fields, all fields of study and science. It’s unbelievable. And some of the time you can only get the abstract to the summary of it. And then you have to pay for the full paper. But by and large they will give you the full paper so you can read the detail of the paper. It makes make writing books like there’s a doddle, and also makes it easy for people to check up on what I’ve written, because I’ve all of the everything I’ve said is referenced. And so, you know, if you don’t believe me when I go to Google Scholar, type in the reference, and you’ll read it. It’s very boring reading, but you’ll you’ll find the right.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:56 Well, thank you, Sergey Brin and Larry Page I think it is. Google, for all their faults, that is quite a public service. Now, you mentioned in the book that wine was once prescribed in UK hospitals – I believe in North America too – by physicians during the prohibition era when alcohol was banned. Why do you think they did that?

Tony Edwards 00:26:17 There was no science about it. Then just doctors noticed it. The life insurance actuaries noticed that first in America, they saw that people who were regular, moderate drinkers lived longer than people who weren’t. So that was the first hint. About the 1920s then I think doctors picked up on that too.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:38 Well, and I think there were a lot of patients who suddenly developed certain illnesses that were ill defined, but they were confident could be healed with a prescription of wine [laughter]..

Tony Edwards 00:26:50 And also, apparently, the churches were allowed to serve a wine. And so a lot of people became Catholics suddenly.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:55 Lots of conversions  I can only imagine. So we’re skirting around this whole issue up till now. Moderation. What is the ideal amount and pattern of wine consumption for maximum health benefits? Now, I know it differs by disease and by women and men and we’ll get into all that. But maybe at a high level, you could tell us?

Tony Edwards 00:27:16 The recent Czechoslovakia study on the whole database about 2018 came to the conclusion that for men, the maximum optimum intake of wine per day with 60g – that’s two thirds of the bottle – and women half that. That was the maximum optimal level. In other words, you can drink up to that level, and then beyond that, it starts to tail off. I’m not sure they’re right, actually, because Italians drink a lot more than that, and live very long. So that was looking at the totality again, the meta analysis, the totality of the evidence.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:55 And maybe this is nitpicking or it hasn’t been defined, but two thirds of a bottle of 8%, say low alcohol wine versus a 14% or 15% wine. Does that make a huge difference? How does it change?

Tony Edwards 00:28:10 It’s obviously the more alcohol within it, the more toxin, the more toxic it becomes.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:16 How much it went up to. Okay, okay.

Tony Edwards 00:28:19 Well you can do the maths yourself.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:21 Oh no I don’t do math anymore. Excuse me science and math, I shouldn’t admit that. Okay, you talked about the differences between men and women in terms of what is moderation. Two thirds of a bottle versus half for women. We’ve heard various theories. Women have more fat or more water, less muscle than men were smaller, or we have not the right or less fewer digestive enzymes. Is it a combination or is there one factor there that makes the recommended dose, if you will, for women lower than men?

Tony Edwards 00:28:57 The major factor is the enzymes, the detoxifying enzymes. Now why the good Lord did this I don’t know, you better ask him.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:06 Unfair. Childbirth too, I’ve got a bone to pick with him. Him. It is clearly a him. Anyway [laughter].

Tony Edwards 00:29:12  I don’t think anybody knows, but these are the facts. Women have fewer detoxifying enzymes. And as I said, there’s the body weight and the body fat and so on and so forth to take into account. But I mean, that’s the major factor of the enzymes.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:27 Just it is what it is. All right. And do wine’s health benefits differ in younger versus older adults and or our tolerances for alcohol as we age?

Tony Edwards 00:29:40 The evidence shows that actually the older you are, the more beneficial it becomes and the more you can tolerate.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:46 More you can tolerate. I hear people saying all the time, oh, now that I’m older, it goes right to my head.

Tony Edwards 00:29:52 However, the women again, I’ve a lot of postmenopausal friends of mine have this problem. As soon as they got the change and it stopped.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:01 All the fun went out of life. Great [laughter]..

Tony Edwards 00:30:06 But in terms of the actual evidence for health benefits, the older you are, the more you can take, and the more beneficial it is for your health.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:15 Why is it more beneficial? Is there any sort of top line as to why it becomes more beneficial?

Tony Edwards 00:30:21 I mean this is work from Denmark. The Danes are very, very big on alcohol research. They spent trillions of Coronas on it. But I don’t think they found out why. They just look at the epidemiological evidence.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:34 Sure, sure. Okay, let’s get into heart. Before we dive into the relationship between wine or alcohol and heart disease, just want to share a few points about scientific study results. For those of us who did not study science beyond high school, they’re often reported on a graph that shows the relationship between two factors, as you do in your book, Tony. With the risk of getting heart disease increasing up the vertical axis versus the amount of wine consumption increasing as you go out along the horizontal line. You have a picture of that in your book?

Tony Edwards 00:31:06 I have the pictures of this in my book, and I’ve done some drawings for your for your listeners.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:11 Your own PowerPoint slides here. Okay. Let’s see. Oh yes, there are the lines. There’s the straight line up, meaning it would start at the lower left and go up to the horizontal right.

Tony Edwards 00:31:25 This is more risk of illness, death, longevity, whatever. And zero risk. For example, if you smoke, the more cigarettes you smoke, the number of cigarettes you smoke that, the more damage it will cause and the more risk of dying you’ll have here. Okay? That’s smoking.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:45 Okay.

Tony Edwards 00:31:46 And that’s what the anti-alcohol people say about alcohol. They say the more alcohol you drink, you know.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:53 There’s more risk.

Tony Edwards 00:31:54 There’s no such thing as a safe level, they’ll say. Stick to that.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:58 Zero.

Tony Edwards 00:31:59 The truth is.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:01 PowerPoint slide two. Oh, here comes that famous J curve, I believe. There you go. Okay, let me just say a few words about that. The J curve J shaped curve where initially the line falls, meaning say your risk of heart disease decreases as you consume more wine. Then it gradually starts to rise at higher levels of consumption. J curve, of course, is far more nuanced. And as I’ve demonstrated, not you, much harder to communicate versus that straight line of advice where the more you drink, the greater your risk, which is not true. So what about this J curve? It’s showing basically that there are benefits for heart disease with consuming wine up to a certain point. What is that?

Tony Edwards 00:32:49 So, in other words, you have a decreased risk of heart disease. So I mean an example of wine. So it would be about a bottle and a half of wine for men roughly. So as you drink a bit more, as you drink a little bit and say half a bottle of wine, you maximize your decreased risk.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:06 Right. The lowest part of the J.

Tony Edwards 00:33:10 Yeah, you drink more here. And this is about a bottle and a half here

Natalie MacLean 00:33:12 A bottle and a half and you have come back up to the zero. You didn’t drink at all.

Tony Edwards 00:33:15 It was exactly the same level as people who don’t drink. to heart disease,

Natalie MacLean 00:33:28 So when it comes to heart disease, it’s better to have some wine in moderation than none at all, at least according to the J curve.

Tony Edwards 00:33:29 Absolutely. And diabetes is the same thing.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:31 Okay, another J curve. All right.

Tony Edwards 00:33:34 Now it’s mainly diabetes and heart disease because of this very strong J curve effect.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:40 Okay. Fascinating. Okay. So red wine seems to have the most health benefits due to the polyphenols that protect plants from disease and sun damage. These polyphenols also help us counter the free radicals in our own bodies that cause aging and disease. White wine has, I think, only 1/12 of the benefits of red wine. But we always hear the story that it’s or we heard the story back in the was it the 80s or 90s on that show 60 minutes, the investigative television show that was all about the resveratrol and red wine sales surged. But how much would we have to drink to get the benefits from the health benefits from resveratrol. Would we be dead?

Tony Edwards 00:34:25 My first book, I was a very pro resveratrol because the evidence was pointing in that direction, but mainly from one source, University of Leicester in England. And then the more I looked at it from the second the wine book, the more I realized that they were over-adding the pudding somewhat. And in fact, the totality of the evidence is that you’ve got to drink an awful lot of resveratrol in order to get any health benefits at all. 20 litres, I think, to get some benefit, which is obviously unthinkable and undrinkable. In Alzheimer’s too, they’ve found that resveratrol has an effect on Alzheimer’s patients. But again, they’ve got to drink ten times that. So that’s sort of 200 litres to get the same amount. So what’s now recognize is it’s the totality of the polyphenols in wine. It’s not just resveratrol. They picked up on that first because the red wine has lots of it and white wine has virtually none. So if it were high, it must be that and a lot of studies, you know, and they did and they as a group think about it. And I think the group think is now ebbing away. And the general opinion amongst these experts is that it’s the totality of the polyphenols within wine, which are. I mean, red wine contains, I don’t know, a thousand polyphenols. And it’s the interaction of these polyphenols with each other that actually produces a beneficial effect.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:52 And polyphenols are of course, natural compounds. Do they include the color pigments and tannins and…

Tony Edwards 00:35:57 All of that stuff.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:59 All, of course. But and they’re interacting with each other. But also it’s also the combination with alcohol itself right?

Tony Edwards 00:36:07 Now, that’s the interesting thing. And in my chapter on zero alcohol wines, which is a brand new one for this book, I thought, well, I just researched a completely blind. I had no expectation of finding what I did find. And Google Scholar, what does he got for us? And I was astonished. I assumed that having taken the alcohol out of wine, you’d at least get some benefit from the detoxification in there. But actually, the reverse is the case in every conceivable area, every conceivable area that they’ve done research on. They’ve done clinical trials on individuals in laboratories giving them fake wine and real wine, alternating. And see, looking at the biomarkers of what, you know, in urine and blood and so on the kind of beneficial things that occur to work out, whether these things having any beneficial effect. I was astonished to read that every single study, every single study to do with heart disease, diabetes, da da da  so that you have got to have the alcohol with the wine in order to have the beneficial effect. So alcohol free wine is fine. If you don’t want to get any benefit from it, it’s fine. Nothing wrong with it. But but you know you will lose out on the benefits of this. Obviously some synergistic connection between the polyphenols and alcohol. And this is you know, it’s a very exciting area of research. And they’re only just working on this now. And I think in one of the questions you’re going to ask me, you have answered. Now, I think this area of research is going to be really fascinating to work out what that connection is between the polyphenols and the alcohol as is a really mind numbing discovery, really, because it’s counterintuitive. You wouldn’t expect it to happen.

Natalie MacLean 00:37:59 Right. You’d think it’d be like drying out a, I don’t know, food and compressing it to its vitamin source. And you think, well, why aren’t the vitamins still there? But it needs that active component of alcohol. Alcohol also delivers flavour which I think is what enlivens wine. But you know, it’s got the the health aspect too. So for non alc or alcohol free wines they’re just neutral. We shouldn’t expect the health benefits but they’re not like worse for us are they.

Tony Edwards 00:38:27 Relatively, yes. Relatively speaking it was because, obviously, relatively to a moderate drinker.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:33 Moderate drinking. Yes. So they’re good for if you’re trying to pace yourself and not go to excess on alcohol, like if you’re kind of alternating me to be a glass with alcohol without or whatever. But sometimes they can be high in sugar and additives and other things, because they have to find some way to put in body and flavoir when you remove the alcohol. So there’s that, too.

Tony Edwards 00:38:55 In my chapter, I showed that actually some of the studies they’ve done in laboratories, some people refused to take part. They were just would not drink non alcohol, zero alcohol wine. It was disgusting. I mean I’ve actually tried it. It is disgusting.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:09 Yes I have. Well no I found some. I have to disagree. I have found some good ones and I do recommend them for those who are trying to pace themselves or, of course, can’t drink because of all kinds of reasons. But anyway. But I am not a temperance gal. That’s not me. So anyway. But that’s fascinating,

Natalie MacLean 00:39:16 Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Tony. Here are my takeaways. Number one, have the health risks of moderate wine consumption been grossly overstated? Oh, yeah. As Tony explains, the alcohol consumption guidelines are completely the inverse of what the evidence says. His first book was a real kick in the teeth to the medical establishment as he showed – very clearly that small amounts in wine – alcohol in moderation is good for you, whereas of course, large amounts are not. While the guidelines were being increasingly reduced, he thought, this is ridiculous. Wine is good for you in moderation. And he wondered why the guidelines were being reduced to a level that actually no one benefits from moderate wine consumption. Study after study shows wine is good news.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:17  Number two, how does moderate wine consumption reduce heart disease? Tony observes that it’s actually a collection of polyphenols in wine that have a beneficial effect, rather than simply resveratrol alone, which itself is one of possibly a thousand polyphenols in red wine. And of course, that’s the reason why red wine offers the most health benefits. It’s the interaction of these polyphenols with each other along with alcohol that produces the benefit.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:32 Number three ,what is the ideal amount and pattern of wine consumption for maximum health benefits? And how does that differ between men and women? Tony notes that a study in 2018 came to the conclusion that for men, the maximum optimum intake of wine per day is 60g, which is about two thirds of a bottle. And for women, half of that. Beyond that level, the health benefits diminish. Until then, the health risks escalate with immoderate consumption. The major differentiating factor between men and women is the detoxifying enzymes, rather than body weight or composition. Women have fewer detoxifying enzymes. The evidence also shows that the older you are, the more beneficial moderate wine consumption becomes.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:37  In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Tony, links to his website and books the video version of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online no matter where you live. If you missed episode five, go back and take a listen. I chat about wine and health with Doctor Edward Miller. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Edward Miller 00:42:05 We’ve suspected a relationship between alcohol and breast cancer for quite a while, and then kind of a big study came out in the British Medical Journal that said even an alcohol beverage a day increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer. So there was understandably a lot of concern going on. There were concerns about that study, though, because this same group had previously reported that alcohol consumption adds years to people’s lives, reduces cardiovascular disease. The more legit and more interesting, I think, to your audience is that one. They didn’t break it down by type of alcohol in the study at all. And so they said, please go back and do that. And when they did, this same study showed that when people drank three or more spirit beverages a day, the women had a 26% increase in their risk of breast cancer. And when they had three wine or more a day, there was no increased risk of breast cancer.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:07 You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Tony. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell one friend about the podcast this week, especially someone you know who’d be interested in learning more about the surprising health benefits and risks of wine. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, their favorite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website at nataliemaclean.com/podcast. Email me if you have a sip, tip, question, or if you’d like to win a copy of Tony’s book or Gus’s. I have five copies to give away.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:46 Or if you’ve read my book or listening to it, I’d also love to hear your thoughts about wine and health. Did this episode help your understanding of the issues? Were you surprised about anything? Do you disagree with some of the points we discussed? Email me at [email protected]. In the show notes, you’ll also find a link to take a free online wine and food pairing class with me called The Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to Fix Them Forever at nataliemaclean.com/class. And that’s all in the show notes at nataliemaclean.com/309. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps a wine that has a high polyphenol count or one that simply makes you happy. Either way, here’s to your health.

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