You sometimes hear and read that red wine is healthy. You drink one to two glasses a day and you lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. Sounds fantastic:drinking wine, getting a little tipsy and working on your health in the meantime. But, is this all true? What is true of this? Online dietician Jonathan Klaassen has the answer.
Online dietician Jonathan Klaassen explains in this article whether red wine is really that healthy.
Alcohol provides 7 kilocalories per gram. A lot higher than other nutrients that provide energy. When you drink a glass of red wine, you quickly ingest calories, but without taking in useful nutrients. A glass of red wine provides you with 'empty calories', so to speak. Okay, the substance alcohol can make us feel good, but from a physiological point of view it is actually of no use to your body.
If we look at the studies, there are indeed a few that state that moderate consumption of alcohol – especially (red) wine – reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease. However, there are some snags to these conclusions, and that alcohol really reduces certain risks, can therefore not be said with full conviction. These studies therefore give me no reason to advise you red wine. On the contrary:the harmful effects of alcohol far outweigh the possible positive ones. For example, alcohol increases the risk of lung cancer, colon cancer and liver cirrhosis, and also regularly causes psychosocial problems or addictions. I don't say this to sound pedantic; it's just plain facts
Whether or not you drink red wine is of course up to you. Alcohol can give a pleasant feeling and can therefore be an addition at times. However, we should not believe that red wine is actually good for us. It is true that there are certain substances in it that have beneficial effects, but red wine consists of much more than just those substances. Again, you should always evaluate a product in its entirety, that is decisive. And while we'd like to be otherwise, alcohol isn't good for us in any way. The adverse effects of alcohol outweigh the possible positive effects of the other substances in red wine.
Jonathan Klaassen is an online dietitian &writer. As an online dietitian, he helps people every day through his online programs. He also writes articles about nutrition and food hypes that he shares online or you can read them in his books. Do you want Jonathan as an online dietitian? Click here for more information!
