Venn There, Done That

The joke goes, “Wine is good for everything, including curing cancer” and there’s a shred of truth to it with the pile of medical research that would cast wine as a magical elixir ala snake oil circa 1850.

For all of the virtuous health benefits that wine has been purported to promote, one distinct aspect has been missing – an appeal to the now-now, of-the-moment narcissism in all of us.  We all have a desire for preventative medicine, but we’re also interested in vanity, today.

With interest then do I read a recent and vast research study that concluded that drinking wine may prevent obesity in women. The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, indicates:

19,220 American women aged 39 or older with a healthy body weight (were asked) to describe their drinking habits in a questionnaire. About 38% drank no alcohol.

Over the next 13 years the researchers found that all the women tended to gain weight but the non-drinkers gained the most. The women’s overall weight gain decreased as alcohol intake increased.

There was also a difference according to the type of alcohol: red wine was associated with the lowest weight gain; beer and spirits were linked to the highest weight gain.

Now, you take the above coupled with the notion that red wine can aid digestion, and you’re getting to something that everybody can get down with – indulgence and waistline.