Alcohol, the “French Paradox,” and the Great Reversal By Mr Vera West

In the 1990s, the “French paradox was all the go; that the French had lower incidences of cardiovascular disease than societies like Briton. French wine makers put this down to wine consumption, and thus the idea was kicked off that moderate alcohol consumption was good for you. The antioxidants in the wine must be acting as a means of cleaning out arteries. This notion gained some support, and soon became a part of popular wisdom. Some researchers opposed it with contrary studies, and it took decades before the idea that alcohol could be something of a health food was debunked. Now, the safest level of alcohol is none:   https://time.com/6248439/no-safe-amount-of-alcohol/

But, there should have been more thinking about the French paradox in the beginning. Even if it was true, perhaps it was not alcohol, but antioxidants in the wine that was causing the reduction in cardiovascular events, such as resveratrol? More likely, the French diet simply may have been healthier than the typical British diet. This matter shows that science, medicine and nutrition in particular, is subject to its fads and follies, and we should take what they say with a bag of salt; not to be eaten of course, you know, hypertension. (The salt issue too is open to debate, needless to say, with one idea being that low sodium diets may also raise blood pressure.)

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317099#A-new-look-at-sodium-and-blood-pressure

https://slate.com/technology/2023/04/alcohol-wine-drinking-healthy-dangerous-study.html?ref=refind

“In 1991 an academic debate spilled out of ivory towers and into the popular imagination. That year, Serge Renaud, a celebrated and charismatic alcohol researcher at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research—who also hailed from a winemaking family in Bordeaux—made a fateful appearance on 60 Minutes. Asked why the French had lower rates of cardiovascular disease than Americans did, even though people in both countries consumed high-fat diets, Renaud replied, without missing a beat, “The consumption of alcohol.” Renaud suspected that the so-called French paradox could be explained by the red wine at French dinner tables.

The French paradox quickly found a receptive audience. The day after the episode aired, according to an account in the food magazine the Valley Table, all U.S. airlines ran out of red wine. For the next month, red wine sales in the U.S. spiked by 44 percent. When the show was re-aired in 1992, sales spiked again, by 49 percent, and stayed elevated for years. Wine companies quickly adorned their bottles with neck tags extolling the product’s health benefits, which were backed up by the research that Renaud had been relying on when he made his off-the-cuff claim, and the dozens of studies that followed.

By 1995, the U.S. dietary guidelines had removed language that alcohol had “no net benefit.” Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, was involved in drafting those guidelines. “The evidence in the mid-’90s seemed incontrovertible, whether you liked it or not. And boy, none of the people who were concerned about the effects of alcohol on society liked that research. But they couldn’t find anything wrong with it at the time. And so, there it was; it had to be dealt with. And it got into the dietary guidelines.”

The press ran with it. A New York Times front-page headline announced, “In an About-Face, U.S. Says Alcohol Has Health Benefits.” The assistant secretary of health said at the time, “In my personal view, wine with meals in moderation is beneficial. There was a significant bias in the past against drinking. To move from antialcohol to health benefits is a big change.”

Physicians were also changing their tunes. One influential alcohol researcher, R. Curtis Ellison—who made a cameo on that infamous 60 Minutes episode about the French paradox—wrote in Wine Spectator in 1998, “You should consume alcohol on a regular basis, perhaps daily. Some might even say that it is dangerous to go more than 24 hours without a drink.”

The results live in all of our heads: There’s nothing wrong with a glass of wine with dinner every night, right? After all, years of studies have suggested that small amounts of alcohol can favorably tweak cholesterol levels, keeping arteries clear of gunk and reducing coronary heart disease. Moderate alcohol use has been endorsed by many doctors and public health officials for years. We’ve all seen the Times headlines.

Now, 25 years later, you’re likely feeling a fair bit of whiplash. According to new guidelines released in recent months by the World Health Organization, the World Heart Federation, and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction, the safest level of drinking is—brace yourself—not a single drop.

“Mainstream scientific opinion has flipped,” said Tim Stockwell, a professor at the University of Victoria who was on the expert panel that rewrote Canada’s guidance on alcohol and health. Last month, Stockwell and others published a new major study rounding up nearly 40 years of research in some 5 million patients, concluding that previous research was so conceptually flawed that alcohol’s supposed health benefits were mostly a statistical mirage. Much different headlines followed.

Meanwhile, it grew increasingly difficult to pin the French paradox on wine alone. Yes, French people drink more red wine, but they also eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and olive oil, as well as modest amounts of meat—and in smaller portions. In other words, pretty close to the Mediterranean diet, which, as loads of research has demonstrated, bolsters cardiovascular health and may account for low obesity rates in France. It also turns out that, for some reason, the French significantly underreport heart disease on death certificates, according to a WHO investigation. Add all this up, and the French people start to seem less paradoxical. And all that research into red wine as an antioxidant superfood? You’d have to drink life-threatening quantities of wine a day to get protective amounts of micronutrients like resveratrol. Even studies that packaged resveratrol into a pill were duds.”