The Big Problem with Anti-Alcohol Studies That No One’s Talking About

Wine’s impact on health has been under the microscope for the past few years, with numerous headlines citing its cancer-causing potential. Sales are down across the industry and consumption has dropped substantially. 

These stories certainly are fear-inducing, yet many don’t paint the full picture. It seems for every study that claims that a glass (yes, a glass) a day will kill you, there’s another that has found low- to-moderate consumption of alcohol is fine or can even boast potential benefits. 

So, what the heck gives?

To better understand wine’s ride on the wellness roller coaster, we spoke to Wine Enthusiast contributor Kate Dingwall about the whiplash. She’s been covering these oftentimes contradictory papers for us over the past year, talking to doctors and researchers about the latest news and reports. 

In her most recent piece, Dingwall dives into the two most recent headlines that sat at opposite ends of the spectrum: a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) that found moderate alcohol consumption can lower risks of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality, and a warning by now-former United States Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who recommended that cancer warning labels be plastered on alcohol bottles.

In this episode, we explore why there’s so much back and forth, when it all started and what we can expect from this new administration going forward. Listen in. 

More Health Coverage

• Is tasting 3,000 wines a year hazardous to your health?
• Warning labels on alcohol are coming. Will drinkers even care?
• Is a glass of wine a day good for you? We investigate.
• Is Dry January the healthy move? Blue Zones’ Dan Buettner weighs in.
• Is a neo-prohibitionist agenda shaping alcohol policy in Oregon?

From the Shop

Find Your Wine a Home

Our selection of wine glasses is the best way to enjoy a bottle’s subtle aromas and flavors.

Shop All Wine Glasses

Episode Transcript

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting.

SPEAKERS
Sara Ventiera, Kate Dingwall

Sara Ventiera 0:00

Hi, I’m Sarah Ventiera, senior editor at Wine Enthusiast Magazine. Today we’re talking with Wine Enthusiast contributor Kate Dingwall. Over the past year or so, Kate has been unpacking wine’s ride on the wellness roller coaster. In the past two months alone, we’ve seen headlines boasting both the potential benefits of moderate alcohol consumption and its correlation to lower mortality, as well as dire warnings from the Surgeon General that any alcohol consumption at all can lead to much higher risk of cancer. So will a glass of wine cause irreparable damage? Listen in to find out more. So Kate, I’ll just start with the beginning. Within the past couple of months, there have been two major contradictory headlines about what impact a glass of wine or two a day can have on your health. Can you tell us about it?

Kate Dingwall 0:55

So in the last two months, two very major reports have come out. The first, which came out in December was from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and medicine, which is a collection of some of the top scientists and scholars in all three of those fields. And the report had some downsides. It found that alcohol does have moderate amounts, can be linked to a slight increased risk of breast cancer, but the report also found that responsible consumption is linked to a lower all cause mortality and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and events, which was a big sigh of relief for people who do like to have a nice glass of wine at the end of the day. And then three weeks later, this report from the US Surgeon General came out, and it stated the exact opposite, that there’s a strong link between alcohol and many different types of cancer, which was frightening, and it felt like a huge whiplash, and it was very understandably wildly confusing for drinkers, for non drinkers, for wine lovers, for beer fans, like two of the biggest scientific bodies in North America are saying very conflicting things about the relationship between alcohol and health, and who should You be listening to? Was the big question on everyone’s mind. Yeah.

Sara Ventiera 2:04

So, I mean, why are these findings all over the place, and who should you be listening to? That’s a

Kate Dingwall 2:10

bit of a tough question right now, because science isn’t perfect, and there hasn’t really been a perfect study analyzing the connection between alcohol and moderate drinking and things like cancer risks and cardiovascular health, there hasn’t really been like this ideal golden study that shows the actual benefits or risks associated with drinking. And the ideal study what scientists are thinking would look like following people who have never drank over a long period of time, and following someone who does drink one alcoholic beverage a day over a long period of time. And we just haven’t seen anything like that come to life yet.

Sara Ventiera 2:50

I mean, and that seems to be one of the big issues, like trying to get one of these, this perfect study. I mean, is that a possible task? And you know, have in your research, have you found anyone who’s pointed to a way to be able to nail that down, how to even make that happen?

Kate Dingwall 3:08

There are people that kind of come up with the what a perfect study looks like, but it would take years and years and years to execute, because the ideal study would look at different demographics and different people and their relationship with alcohol over a long period of time. Kind of the closest thing we’ve had so far is the National Academies recent report, which looked at it gathered a top panel of scientists and experts across all fields with this focus on alcohol and health, be it epidemiology or cardiovascular health. And they looked at all of the studies, and they did a very good job of looking at how they were conducted, the sample groups, the methodology and the results, and then came to a conclusion based on that. So they really looked at all of the research out there.

Sara Ventiera 3:57

So given all of the studies which, I mean, we’ll back up into a moment, some of the previous years studies which say widely different things. I mean, does this seem to be the most comprehensive and well researched of the various research?

Kate Dingwall 4:12

I put a lot of faith in it, and I think it’s super legit. The the academy is made up of scientists across science, engineering and medicine, and they have a really, really rigorous approach to their reports, and their report was also commissioned by Congress and directed by the USDA. So that’s a lot of fate, like right top line right there. And how they conduct their report is they assembled this committee, and they post all the names on a website, and anyone can kind of come forward and look up those names and challenge someone’s membership, maybe they have a conflict of interest, financially or intellectually, or they have some sort of relationship with the alcohol a whole industry, which would obviously give them a bias towards the study. And this happened, there were two proposed members for this study who were kicked off because they had found a relationship in some capacity. To do with the alcohol industry. So they are very thorough about making sure they’re putting forward the best people. And then this committee then gathers all the data on the subject, all the existing reports, and they meet both in closed and open sessions, which means you and I can literally roll up to this session and see what they’re working on, see how look at the studies that they’re conducting, how they’re analyzing it, I don’t think a lot of people actually show up. You can, which is the nice point, and I flag that they look at how these studies were conducted, because a lot of the issues and a lot of the controversy surrounding these conflicting reports is that a lot of the studies have there’s a lot of kind of different ways people are analyzing these reports. Some studies in the past have compared people who do drink alcohol with people who do not consume alcohol at the moment, which does include people who may be quit because their doctor was telling them that alcohol is really affecting their health, or maybe they had an alcohol abuse problem and are currently in remission and not drinking anymore, and that’s not really a fair comparison. So there’s a lot of studies that scientists think have skewed data because they weren’t really looking at the right type of non drinker.

Sara Ventiera 6:14

Yeah, that totally makes sense.

Kate Dingwall 6:16

Like if I was abusing alcohol for a long period of time and stopped, that doesn’t really make me give me the same health as someone who hasn’t drank their entire life. They shouldn’t really be grouped in the same group, and then once this committee kind of comes forward and presents this research, it’s then peer reviewed by a panel of like 1014, different scientists. So there’s a lot of hands and a lot of expert hands on these studies, so I put a lot of fate in it.

Sara Ventiera 6:43

And so I mean, what’s the deal with the Surgeon General study, drawing such or, you know, the surgeon general review, drawing such different conclusions, because this was, you know, back to back.

Kate Dingwall 6:55

Yeah, it came out within three weeks of each other, which was quite frightening and quite confusing for everyone so dr Murthy, who actually was the Surgeon General until Trump took office, he found evidence between seven types of cancer and casual drinking. He also called for cancer warnings to be placed on alcohol labels, which is like a cigarette style warning on your your Beaujolais, even your white claw, would have this big cancer warning on it. He conducted his report in a very different manner from the academies, while the academies kind of gathered all the research, started from scratch. He the Surgeon General’s report is more of a review of all the literature, which includes people’s interpretation of the literature, and came out to a consensus from that. So it’s more of one person’s perspective, rather than a panel of scientists and scholars. He also one of the criticisms following the Surgeon General’s report is that he didn’t do a great job separating people who have one glass of wine a day with those high risk heavy drinkers, the people who are drinking in higher volumes, which, again, it’s similar to the former drinkers and the complete abstainers. They shouldn’t really be living in that same category. So it left a lot of confusion and probably increased a lot of stress surrounding that report. And to further that confusion, Dr Murthy is no longer in his office. He left the post on january 20, and we don’t really know what the new Surgeon General will do, what they what kind of stance they’ll take on this matter, so it leaves a lot of question marks surrounding report.

Sara Ventiera 8:32

Well, and I mean this, this whiplash, well, it’s the most current version of it, but there have also been Other studies in the past, who that have made similar claims about wines, cancer causing capabilities. You know, there was a lancet report, or a couple Lancet reports, and then, you know, the World Health Organization warning, could you tell us a little bit about that?

Kate Dingwall 8:56

We have seen the relationship between alcohol and health kind of fluctuate a lot over the past 40 years. We saw it with the Mothers Against Drunk Driving quite a lot in the 80s and 90s, when there was a large campaign towards moderation, largely contributed to by a rise in deaths from overconsumption and driving. And then that kind of went back away in the in 1991 when French epidemiologists put forward the idea of the French paradox, which was largely popularized by Morley Schaper saper, who was a journalist who put forward this segment, it was quite funny of him in a French bistro eating these like very indulgent, very buttery plates of classic French cuisine drinking some wine. And he proposed the concept of, if French folks eat like this and drink like this every day, why are there rates of heart disease and heart related conditions lower than ours? And that repopularized The idea that wine can be can have positive health attributes. And then that’s gone away in recent years, is more reports like the lancet study in 2018 which declared that alcohol is not safe for consumption in any amount. And then in 2021 a different International Journal of Epidemiology found flaws in the way that study was conducted. So there’s just been a lot of flip flopping on this.

Sara Ventiera 10:22

Yeah. I mean, you know, going back decades, obviously, you know, why is this? Why do you think this is changing, you know, and going back and forth so much. A lot

Kate Dingwall 10:34

of it has to do with the fact there’s no perfect scientific study, and scientists have very different opinions. Everyone has different opinions on how these studies should be conducted, the role that alcohol should play in lives, and it really depends on who you ask, although the noise around it has gotten a lot louder in the last few years, as we see this rise of the non alcoholic drinks movement and this rise of the new prohibitionist movement, and the latter, both of those sectors have a lot of money in the game now. So it’s becoming an increasingly noisy and loud movement. And

Sara Ventiera 11:13

I mean, it’s, it’s, there’s a lot of talk, and a lot of you know, all of the stats seems to be pointing towards people drinking less, drinking less wine, drinking less spirits, everything overall, are these, and we’re hearing a lot about these, Neo prohibitionist you know, what sort of impact is that playing on the science and the studies?

Kate Dingwall 11:36

That is the hot topic of the moment right now, there are two major temperance groups. One’s called mo Bendi International, and the other is Alcohol Justice, who have grown in size and influence, and they’re getting a lot closer to policy makers. Is where it gets a little spicy. Movendi International has been around since the 1800s and they used to be called the independent order of good Templars, and have since rebranded in the last kind of five, six years, or something a little more modern. And they were very key in instigating prohibition, like the first one back 100 years ago. They post a lot of blogs and science just discrediting capital B, big alcohol, and they’re getting a lot closer to lawmakers. They were actually cited as a source in the who’s 2024 report on alcohol. And this is very much a anti alcohol movement, and these organizations are going to know a lot of money too. Rob McMillan, who from the Silicon Valley Bank, pointed out that the Bill Gates Foundation puts a huge amount of money towards these groups, which is a lot of financial power, and now starting to sway policy, which is a bit scary for the alcohol industry, because it kind of removes the science from it. Oh,

Sara Ventiera 12:56

man. So we’re getting big tech and alcohol as well now,

Kate Dingwall 12:59

yeah, yeah, just to make everything a little bit more confusing.

Sara Ventiera 13:04

And I mean, do we see, you know, there’s a new administration now, obviously, are there any expectations for what you know, where the science or the studies or policy will be moving in terms of alcohol, and, you know, dietary, guidelines and all of that.

Kate Dingwall 13:23

That’s a bit of a tricky question. President Trump doesn’t, notably, doesn’t drink, although he does own a winery. So there’s a lot of kind of ifs and what’s around, what questions if he’ll continue with this kind of anti alcohol movement roaming out of the Surgeon General’s office. We also don’t know we’ll be filling that role. Maybe it’ll be someone who’s a little bit closer to beverage alcohol. Maybe it won’t be. There’s, yeah, a lot of huge question marks surrounding that. On one hand, President Trump is a notable fast food lover the last which obviously isn’t super great for you. The last Surgeon General’s report noted that obesity is the second biggest cause of death among Americans, but we’re also not seeing a push towards cancer warnings on fast food, which a lot of the beverage alcohol people have been pointing out, which is one of the bigger hypocrisies coming out of that Surgeon General’s report.

Sara Ventiera 14:24

Well, and I think, you know these reports, you know, they obviously make for great headlines. You’ve been doing a great job of covering everything that’s been going on over the past couple of years. But the biggest question is, like, are consumers actually paying attention? Does anyone actually care?

Kate Dingwall 14:40

I think people the issue with the headlines being so dramatic is it is a bit frightening. I live in Canada, and two years ago, when the who put out its recommendation saying no amount of alcohol is safe, the Canadian government fell in line. And I remember I was going out. For drinks with my cousin, and we’re both big wine people. We were both doing our ws ETS around the same time, and we love going out for a glass opening something cool. And the day it came out, we were sitting there, and she was like, I’m frightened. I’m looking at the headlines, and I don’t think I want to drink tonight. I’m scared. These headlines have a huge shock factor. Regardless of how much you know about wine, how much you read the reports, how up to date you are, they’re a little scary. It’s easy to flinch.

Sara Ventiera 15:31

Yeah, I mean, and we’re obviously hearing a lot of news about people drinking less. You know, alcohol sales down, although you know, people are drinking better, which I guess, is great. But do you think this has anything to do with these negative reports, or is this like a a different matter? I think

Kate Dingwall 15:50

it definitely plays into it. But we’re at a weird time in the wine industry. The younger drink. Younger generations have this wonderful wealth of products that aren’t just alcohol that consume. They have cannabis, they have these THC beverages, there’s seltzers, there’s all these sorts of fun things for them to drink. And they’re kind of moving away from wine, which is a bit spooky. As millennials are kind of getting a little bit older, we’re watching our consumption a little bit more. Older generations are aging out of wine, and there’s not really anyone filling that void. We’re also seeing it’s a golden age of non alcoholic drinks as well, which is kind of fun. There’s some really lovely products to drink if you’re choosing to not drink. And we’re also seeing a big vibe change in how we’re consuming non alcoholic products, like 10 years ago, if you weren’t drinking, it was because you were pregnant or had a problem. Now, non alcoholic products are, like very much a part of our lives. It’s a very normal thing to drink, which is exciting because I’m sure we could all be a little bit healthier with our habits. But it’s also taking things away, or taking people away from the wine market, which is a bit scary for folks in wine. So we’re yeah, there’s just this many things going on at the moment in wine which is causing people to drink a little bit less,

Samantha Sette 17:14

in addition to producing world class content. Did you know that Wine Enthusiast is also the premier shopping destination for wine lifestyle products. Just visit our shop at Wine enthusiast.com where you’ll discover an amazing assortment of unique quality items guaranteed to enhance your wine experience, from glassware and accessories to 1000s of unique wine gifts. It’s like a toy store for wine lovers, and don’t forget about protecting your wine. We are the nation’s leading retailer of wine storage products, whether you have six or 600 bottles, desire a wine cabinet or a custom designed drying room, our free wine storage consultations will help you find the perfect wine fit for your collection. Visit Wine enthusiast.com today, we bring wine to life, brought to you by the Wine Enthusiast shop.

Sara Ventiera 18:07

You know you also just covered Silicon Valley bank’s most recent report, and that found a lot of the same sort of findings of people drinking last but it wasn’t just the shifting preferences. There’s other issues affecting the wine industry as well. Could you tell us a little bit about some of those findings? Yes,

Kate Dingwall 18:26

it is, like I mentioned, a bit of a scary time in wine. We’re coming off three decades of just fantastic sales and growth and the market’s course correcting a little bit. There’s a lot of issues with oversupply in California and Oregon and Washington, demand is down across the board, as we see people kind of reconsidering how much they’re consuming. We’re seeing premiumization a little bit. People are drinking less, but better, which is a very good sign. And we’re seeing that no and low alcohol movement jump it 27% over the last year, which is huge,

Sara Ventiera 19:03

yeah. And you know, I mean, there’s so many different factors here, and you know, health being one of them. I mean, in your opinion, what does this all mean for the wine industry? And you know, do you think we’ll continue to see these like this, Whiplash of headlines about whether or not wine will kill you with a glass or two a day, or if that’s actually, you know, not gonna have a health effect, or just a mild to moderate health effect. It’s

Kate Dingwall 19:32

hard, because it feels like there’s so many different cards in the air right now, and it’s really hard to predict how they’re gonna land. I know no one low alcohol is a big deal at the moment, but Rob McMillan pointed out during the Silicon Valley Bank seminar, but that there’s not that much more space for that category to grow. You don’t need hundreds of different brands of non alcoholic wine, and it’s also very expensive, so regular. Regular proof wineries can’t really get into the no and low alcohol game at affordable sum, so there’s only so much more space for that to grow. And I know it’s been a bit of a darling category, but it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. It’s going to hit a bit of a ceiling, is what I’m guessing. The health debate is interesting and it’s hard, because there’s so much movement from the Neo prohibitionist, as they call it, category, that it’s hard to it’s hard to break through that and see what the actual science is. And I don’t think we have any reports at the moment which have analyzed the relationship between health and alcohol over a long period of time, so you can actually tell what’s going on. There’s just so much noise and clutter to break through that it’s very difficult to see what the facts are through it all.

Sara Ventiera 20:45

Yeah, I mean, and that’s, you know, given these headlines, you know, there, we’ve seen the wine industry kind of starting to fight back a little bit with initiatives like come over October and trying to promote the, you know, social benefits of wine. Is that something that’s being discussed in these studies, much or being taken into account, and what role do you see wine as a sort of social tie playing into all of this?

Kate Dingwall 21:12

Well, I think, and Rob McMillan has pointed this out over the last couple Silicon Valley Bank reports, is that we need to do a better job at marketing wine as something that’s very much a social connector, and it’s lower in alcohol than spirits. It’s a largely Earth reflective product. It’s very much an agricultural product, something with a lot of history and culture. And while we do a good job of communicating that internally in the industry, we haven’t done a great job of that, of telling these positive attributes to new consumers. Someone pointed this out on the Silicon Valley Bank seminars. Tiger striping is a big thing now, where you kind of interchange alcoholic drink and non alcoholic drink and alcoholic drink, and a lot of people are switching to low alcohol, and why aren’t we marketing ourselves kind of a non lower alcohol alternative to Tiger strike with like, have a martini, then have a glass of wine. That might be a bit much, maybe don’t do that, but kind of consider wine something that’s a little bit more sessionable than hard alcohol. Can think of it as a connector. Think of it as a historical beverage of a cultural one, and we haven’t done a great job of marketing ourselves to as such, to new drinkers, which may be why they’re not coming over to wine. Yeah,

Sara Ventiera 22:31

And I think the whole drinking less, but drinking better, is a really interesting point, because I’m I don’t think anybody out there is saying that binge drinking is good for you. I mean, I think anyone who’s had a hangover is probably pretty sure that that’s not good for you. But, you know, these studies are looking at a glass or two a day, and it’ll be interesting to see where it pans out over the future. You know, as people are drinking fewer glasses but higher quality bottlings, like, where is that gonna lead the industry,

Kate Dingwall 23:00

and that’s a very important point of both all of these studies, as they’re looking at like one to two glasses a day, one for women, two, two glasses for men per day. And that’s kind of the bar we’re looking at. Any more than that is hard stop, not good for you. But as we see kind of these premiumization trends, it makes a lot of sense that people are opting to drink a really nice bottle of wine instead of a bunch of vodka sodas or something in that realm. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity in wine to position itself as this really cool product that comes from the hands of farmers and wine makers, and is very much entwined into agriculture and luxury a little bit.

Sara Ventiera 23:46

Yeah. I mean, and I you know, if you want to get into the whole regenerative farming debate, can actually, you know, have a positive impact on the environment and all of that sort of stuff. So, yeah, it’ll be interesting to see where it pans out. Yeah.

Kate Dingwall 23:59

And it’s very hard to predict that right now, because there’s so many internal and external factors affecting wine at the moment, and

Sara Ventiera 24:08

so, I mean, do you have any thoughts on, you know, what’s what’s next, or if we’re gonna see another headline that’s gonna make us, you know, turn our heads again in Shock.

Kate Dingwall 24:20

We are the United States is due to update their health guidelines this year, which is part of what the Academy’s report was going to influence. So I’d be interested to see how that plays out. Obviously, the Academy’s report was more in favor. Well, had found positive benefits to moderate consumption. But it will be interesting to see how that report, how the guidelines pan out, if we’re going to stay to one glass of wine per day for women, two glasses of wine per day for men, or if that will lower, if that will rise, it’ll be interesting. Waiting to see.

Sara Ventiera 25:02

Yeah, there’s a lot to parse out over the coming months and years, I guess, and we’ll see where things pan out.

Kate Dingwall 25:18

Yeah, it’s a bit spooky, but I think it’s always good to remember that even though, even with the rise in a slight risk of cancer. It’s a minuscule amount. It’s like the same it’s point zero, something percent. So you always have to remember weigh your risks and rewards to it. One of the doctors I interviewed for the piece compared it to kids playing sports. It’s like the most common reason kids end up in the ER, but at the end of the day, you’re having fun, you’re communicating, you’re getting being social. So if that’s a big part of your life, and it slightly rises your raises your risk of something negative, are you okay with that? There’s so many beautiful life memories woven into wine that maybe it’s worth a little bit of the risk, and you have everyone can make their own decision to that regard.

Sara Ventiera 26:06

Yeah. I mean, it’s great that they’re studying these things, and it’s great that there are people scrutinizing the studies, because, you know, it has been a huge part of human history, obviously, and I guess we’ll have to see where it goes next.

Kate Dingwall 26:22

Yeah, as someone who works in wine like knock on wood, but Well,

Sara Ventiera 26:26

thank you so much, Kate, your reporting has been spectacular, and we’re very grateful for all of your really hard work on all the stories that you’ve been writing for us. And yeah, it’s great having you on the Wine Enthusiast podcast,

Kate Dingwall 26:41

yeah, thank you for having me. It’s always a pleasure to work with you in the written word, so it’s nice to switch that up and chat

Sara Ventiera 26:53

when it comes to living healthier lives, contacts matter. Are you planning to change your drinking habits in the coming year? If so, how we’d love to know, you can email us your comments and questions at podcast at Wine enthusiast.com Remember, you can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, and anywhere else you listen to your favorite shows. You can also go to Wine enthusiast.com backslash podcast for more episodes and transcripts. I’m Sarah Ventura, thanks for listening. You.

The post The Big Problem with Anti-Alcohol Studies That No One’s Talking About appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.