“It upset an awful lot of people,” Dr. Stockwell said. “The alcohol industry took huge steps and spent a lot of money to counteract this rather awkward message that was coming out,” he added. Within months, an industry-funded group had organized a symposium to debate the research, and they invited Dr. Fillmore.
In notes Dr. Stockwell saved, Dr. Fillmore wrote that the discussion was “hot and heavy, such that I felt like I needed to get my shoe off, banging it on the table.”
And when two conference organizers published a summary of the symposium that said that “the consensus of the conference” was that moderate alcohol consumption was associated with better health, Dr. Stockwell said that Dr. Fillmore “was furious” that her views weren’t represented.
Since then, many more studies, including one Dr. Stockwell and his colleagues published in 2023, have confirmed that alcohol is not the health drink it was once believed to be.
In 2022, researchers reported graver news: Not only was there no cardiovascular benefit to drinking alcohol, it could even increase the risk of heart issues, said Dr. Leslie Cho, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic.
Today, more and more research shows that even one drink per day can increase your chances of developing conditions like high blood pressure and an irregular heart rhythm, both of which can lead to stroke, heart failure or other health consequences, she said.
And alcohol’s links to cancer are clear — something the World Health Organization has been stating since 1988.
That’s a very different message from the one patients might have heard from their doctors for years, Dr. Cho acknowledged. But the consensus has shifted.
No amount of alcohol is safe, the W.H.O. and other health agencies have said, regardless of whether you’re drinking wine, beer or liquor.
So, is wine out?
When counseling her cancer patients, Jennifer L. Hay, a behavioral scientist and health psychologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, said that many are “absolutely shocked” to learn that alcohol, including wine, is a carcinogen. In a 2023 study, researchers surveyed nearly 4,000 U.S. adults and found that only 20 percent were aware that wine could cause cancer — compared with 25 percent who knew that beer could, and 31 percent who knew that liquor could.
Dr. Cho’s cardiology patients are often surprised when she suggests that they should cut back on alcohol, including wine. “They’re like, ‘What? I thought it was supposed to protect against heart disease,’” she said.
Red wine does contain compounds called polyphenols, some of which can have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
But no studies, including decades of research on one polyphenol called resveratrol, have definitively linked the amounts that you get from red wine to good health, Dr. Cho said. And there’s no good evidence that wine is less harmful than other types of alcohol, she added.
“That can be really hard to hear,” Dr. Hay acknowledged.
Whenever she tells people that she studies the risks of alcohol, “a pall falls over the room,” she said.
But Dr. Hay and other researchers are not suggesting a “prohibition” on alcohol, Dr. Hay added. She just wants people to be informed about the risks.
And for most people, it’s fine to enjoy a glass of wine every now and then, Dr. Cho said.
But it doesn’t help your heart, she said. “It’s just time to let go of that belief.”
Alice Callahan is a Times reporter covering nutrition and health. She has a Ph.D. in nutrition from the University of California, Davis.
Hay Jim! how about comparing red wine with the other items in our diet like: peanuts, soy, wheat, russet potatos, spinach, milk products, pork, tuna, rice, all new world foods, etc.
We’ll have to have the PhD nutritionists enlighten us. But one thing I learned in medical school: the questions stay the same, but every few years the answers change!