Now wine has to be light

According to the World Cancer Research Fund, wine does good only if its alcohol content is low. These wines are conquering the market and the sympathy of the scientific world

by Graziano Alderighi

A tannic and well structured, with a good alcoholic content, wine, was considered healthy until a few years ago.

Nowadays the trend favors light wines, and a Treviso firm has launched "9.5 Cold Wine", a spumante brut from Prosecco Chardonnay grapes that, as the names says, offers the pleasure of a good Italian spumante with only 9.5% of alcohol content, obtained by an early grape harvest and using special yeasts that ferment at lower temperatures.

According to the research of British scientists from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), one glass of wine per days can help your health, especially if light. The dossier from 2007 shows that a 10% alcoholic content reduces the risk of intestine cancer of 7% with respect to 12% and 14% wines.

An excessive intake of wine, just as any other alcoholic drink, has toxic effects, especially on the liver, due to alcohol. Ethyl alcohol is a carcinogenic agent for several organs, and it is toxic for embryos, reason why it is not recommended to pregnant women.

On the other hand, a limited wine intake (maximum two glasses per day), has positive effects: it reduces the LDL cholesterol and increases the HDL (or “good”) cholesterol, and it inhibits the platelets aggregation; it also provides polyphenols, especially resveratrol, and provides anti-carcinogenic substances and it helps maintaining arteries open.
Just a question: does scientific research fit the marker or does the market fit scientific evidence?