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Showing posts from September, 2011

Australian policy group statment on alcohol misses the mark

Anti-alcohol activists fired another salvo last week in Australia with the release of a paper by the Alcohol Policy Coalition challenging the view that regular consumption of red wine is good for the heart. They even went so far as to proclaim wine’s health benefits a busted myth. The paper authoritatively bases its interpretation on a review of “all the scientific evidence” and asserts that red wine has “no special, protective qualities when it relates to cardiovascular disease.” I too have reviewed a lot of data on this subject for my book “Age Gets Better with Wine” and came to the exact opposite conclusion. So again I am left to wonder how such this well-meaning group of knowledgeable people can still get it so wrong? It may be that the Australians are just a bit behind the times on this one, so let’s back it up a few years. Nearly all of what is now gospel about lifestyle factors and heart health comes from the Framingham study , now in its fourth generation. Back in the 1970