Wine and health experiments

It should be obvious to most adults that binge drinking is detrimental to health. However, humans have consumed alcohol for several millennia now, so it should be equally clear that smaller amounts may well be okay. I am a scientist, and my approach is that we need experimental evidence about how much is “too much”.

Indeed, in a couple of months the 2026 Unified Wine & Grape Symposium (January 27-29) will tackle this topic again in one of its sessions:

This straight-talk session cuts through the noise that’s leaving wine professionals scrambling for answers. With U.S. Dietary Guidelines under scrutiny and consumer perception shifting, Felicity Carter will moderate a dialogue with Dr. Laura Catena to address what the science actually reveals and how the industry can communicate responsibly.

Myself, I have written about this topic quite a few times before (look under “Wine health” in the menu to the lower right). I also continue to do my reading in the scientific literature about health; and I have recently come across a review / summary article that is worth highlighting here. It is of most relevance because it is about the quality of the scientific experiments conducted about alcohol intake.

How much is too much? A methodological investigation of the literature on alcohol consumption and health. Journal of Wine Economics (2025):

Until a few years ago, moderate alcohol consumption was thought to have (mild) beneficial effects on health. However, some recent studies have suggested that “there is no safe level” of alcohol intake. Consequently, public health institutions have responded by advising against any level of alcohol use and suggesting governments a number of policies to reduce overall alcohol consumption. Nonetheless, medical studies suffer from a variety of intrinsic limitations that could undermine the reliability of their findings, especially when focusing on low-intake levels. On the one hand, we show that the literature on alcohol consumption may suffer from publication bias; such a problem is known to be present in the scientific literature in general. On the other hand, we discuss other potential sources of bias, which are inevitable due to the infeasibility of randomized controlled trials. We assess a sample of articles for the presence of omitted variable bias, miscalculation of alcohol intake, use of linear in place of non-linear models, lack of validation of Mendelian randomization assumptions, and other possible weaknesses. We conclude that the claim that “there is no safe level” of alcohol intake is not sufficiently supported based on our current scientific knowledge.

So, this gives you a clear idea about what is required for high-quality results, and that plenty of experiments meet these requirements.