The Role of Wine in Diet and Health

Wine is the quintessential food beverage. Evidence both historical and modem confirms its role in a healthy diet. Its virtues are most evident when it accompanies food that goes naturally with it - which probably explains why the Mediterranean diet, exemplified by the symbiosis of Italian, French and Spanish food and wine, continues to gain advocates in an increasingly health-conscious world.

Wine is a food. Its vitamin and mineral content do not make it a nutritional necessity, but it supplies the human organism with ethyl alcohol and sugars that are a useful source of calorific energy. Wine's medicinal properties were known even before the Greeks and Romans. Though its healing powers may have been overstated at times when other cures were unavailable, modem medicine is rediscovering the benefits to health of wine that were once dismissed as folklore.

A healthy person is able to metabolize one gramme of ethyl alcohol per day for every kilo of body weight. Thus the recommended daily consumption for a person weighing 75 kg (165 pounds) can be calculated as approximately 75 g, equivalent to 750 ml of wine with an alcohol content of 12.50 -in other words one standard bottle of average strength wine per day.

Sensible wine drinking, in line with these suggested amounts, can be an aid to the healthy functioning of the following organs:

1. The heart and circulatory system: the tonic effect of wine on the cardiovascular system is due to ethyl alcohol, which dilates the veins and increases the resistance of blood vessels. The iron content of red wines helps combat anemia by "building blood." Tannins and coloring pigments counteract fatty deposits arid help to lower cholesterol.
   
2. The digestive system: wine can facilitate digestion by increasing the secretion of gastric juices, stimulated mainly by ethyl alcohol and tartaric acid. Lactic acid has an antiseptic and slightly laxative effect on the intestine.
   
3. The liver: the sugars in wine, in particular glucose, stimulate the function of the liver. Glycerin favors the secretion of bile.
   
4. The kidneys: diuretic functions are aided by ethyl alcohol and acid salts, notably potassium bitartrate, contained in wine.
   
5. The lungs: the respiratory system is stimulated by the ethyl alcohol in wine which increases the rate of oxygenation.

Dry wine in small doses is sometimes recommended to diabetics as a means of building glucose tolerance. It is known to stimulate the appetite of underweight persons. It is a useful source of energy. (In modern dietary science the sugars and alcohol contained in wine are defined as a thermodymogenic foods). Wine can also have pleasant effects on our emotional and psychological state, helping people to overcome shyness, anxiety and depression. In social settings it stimulates the intellect and the desire to communicate.

Excessive use of alcohol on the other hand diminishes or reverses the benefits of moderate wine drinking. The danger of alcohol abuse are well known and widely discussed, as they should be in a reasonable modern society.