Wine & Health

'No amount of alcohol is safe.' So read the August 23, 2018 headlines following the publication in the journal Lancet of a global study. Though in the weeks after the Lancet’s publication it became plain that the authors’ conclusions were overstated to bait the media, it was hard to ignore troubling epidemiological evidence that this and other recent studies had discovered which seemed to refute decades of positive health associations with moderate alcohol consumption.So, in this apparent paradigm shift, what happened to the French Paradox?According to the first wide-ranging and magisterial analysis of the existing wine health science, Wine & Health, the answer emerges as a set of new paradoxes: We see that studies may be globally accurate while at the same time miss wine’s position in health and well-being; we note that wine drinkers outlive nondrinkers on average, even as we are warned about alcohol’s dangers; we observe that wine drinkers maintain mental sharpness in old age better than teetotalers; and we find evidence of wine’s benefits in the very studies telling us about alcohol’s dangers.So where does all of this leave wine? On the dinner table, as part of a moderate, healthy adult diet. In Wine & Health, Dr. Richard Baxter argues that wine continues to play a central role in healthy living and explains in objective terms what every wine lover needs to know: When it is a daily drink with meals and part of a healthy lifestyle, wine’s association with longevity and healthspan endures, as it has done since the dawn of civilization.'Superb. The science is balanced and sound, and the writing is witty and enjoyable'-R. Curtis Ellitson, M.D. Professor of Medicine and Public Health, Boston University Medical Center