Cheers - now they say wine isn't good for you

It is one of the comforts of the drinking classes. Wine is good for you. A few tipples every day will guard against heart attacks, high blood pressure, strokes, various cancers and myriad other ills, say enthusiasts - pointing to several studies that have supported the health benefits of booze. It's a perfect excuse to uncork another bottle of burgundy, they say.

But now an international team of scientific killjoys has discovered that this reassuring notion may be based on incorrect data. It's not the wine that helps drinkers to live to a ripe old age, it's the lifestyle that comes with the consumption of Chablis, Côtes du Rhône and Jacob's Creek.

According to the findings of scientists at Duke University, North Carolina, and the Institute of Preventive Medicine in Copenhagen, wine drinkers live longer, healthier lives because they 'consume more fruit and vegetables, have higher fibre intakes and a lower prevalence of smoking'.

By contrast, teetotallers were found to have the worst lifestyles, smoking more cigarettes and munching their way through fatty, unhealthy foods. They are also less likely to exercise regularly and are generally fatter and unfit.

The investigators found that beer and spirit drinkers tend to fall between these two alcoholic extremes.

The finding is startling because it confounds a picture that has been carefully established by epidemiologists over the past 10 years. These studies started with the surprising observation that the French live longer and suffer less heart disease than other Europeans, even though they eat lots of cholesterol-rich meals - crammed with creams, meats, animal fats and cheese - washed down with litres of wine.

Subsequent research suggested that wine, particularly red wine, was the key protective factor in this diet and was helping to guard drinkers against heart disease. Modest drinking (two or three units a day) actually helped to guard against coronary illness, it was claimed.

Researchers claimed that wine contains antioxidants that reduce the activity of free radicals that damage cells of the cardiovascular system, and may in some cases induce malignancy. Drink wine and you will therefore protect yourself against many illnesses.

However, conclusive evidence has been hard to nail down because so many other issues affect longevity and health. So John Barefoot, of Duke University, and Morten Gronbaek, of Copenhagen's Institute of Preventive Medicine, decided to exploit a long-term health study of 4,500 graduates of North Carolina University.

All subjects are educated, affluent and white, thus balancing out issues of ethnicity and socio-economic background. More importantly, the drinking habits of all the participants were known to researchers.

Barefoot and his team divided these according to five categories: wine-drinkers, beer-swillers, spirit-sippers, teetotallers and those who drink anything put in front of them. To be placed in one of the first three categories, a subject had to consume more than half his alcoholic intake in that form.

The researchers then analysed respondents according to their diets, cholesterol levels, smoking habits, exercise regimes and other habits. The results, published in the forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition , revealed that wine-drinkers simply have the best lifestyles, regardless of income or socio-economic status. Beer, spirit and general drinkers were less healthy and non-drinkers were the worst.

'Subjects who preferred wine had healthier diets than those who preferred beer or spirits or had no preference,' say the researchers. 'Wine drinkers reported eating more servings of fruit and vegetables and fewer servings of red or fried meats. The diets of wine drinkers contained less cholesterol, saturated fat, and more fibre.

'Compared with all drinkers, those who drank no alcohol consumed fewer vegetables and more fibre. Nondrinkers were less likely to exercise regularly and have a higher mean body mass index. Controlling for income and education had little effect on these associations.'

The team concludes that wine's apparent health benefits may instead be due to the 'confounding' effects of their dietary habits. In short, there is nothing that directly confers any health benefit in a glass or two of wine - except the comfort given to the drinker that he or she has such a sensible way of life.