(Susanna Barrows told me the story once,
complete with photos, of a French study prior to the First World War which
compared the marching and fighting abilities of French poilus (infantry
soldiers) when their rations included wine vs. when their rations included
beer. Wine won, with a patriotic flourish in the study's reporting, as
I remember. The authors of that study would appreciate the one
below.
"Wine drinkers were less
likely to die violent deaths" is the giveaway line that there must be
uncontrolled social differences between the wine and beer drinkers in the
study, which could also be affecting the other findings.
Robin)
Yahoo!/Reuters - Monday September 13, 1999
Wine Drinking
Beats Beer In French Health Study
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Drinking a few
glasses of wine a day proves to be more of a
life-saver than beer
drinking, perhaps because of cancer-fighting compounds in
wine, a study
of more than 36,000 middle-aged Frenchmen said Sunday.
As previous
studies have shown, drinking one to three glasses of wine daily can
lower
blood pressure and cholesterol levels and lessen the chances of
suffering
a heart attack.
The French study showed moderate wine
drinkers had a death rate from heart
attacks that was between 45-48
percent lower than those who abstained from
drinking. Red wine
particularly contains antioxidants that may help prevent
heart
disease.
Beer drinkers were found to have a 42 percent lower rate of
fatal heart attacks
than non-drinkers, but not as low as the wine
drinkers.
But the wine drinkers in the study also had a significantly
lower risk of dying
from all causes than either beer drinkers or
nondrinkers, when adjusted for
factors such as age and
smoking.
Wine drinkers were less likely to die violent deaths, or
suffer fatal bouts with
cancer or other diseases.
While drinking
alcohol from any source increases the risk of cancer, the
researchers
said, substances found in wine such as resvaratrol may more
than
compensate by inhibiting development of the disease.
The
study found beer drinkers did not enjoy the same protection from cancer
as
wine drinkers. Drinking beer might even have posed an increased risk
of cancer
due to the presence of substances called nitrosamines found in
beers brewed
before 1990.
Most types of beer have since been made
with much lower levels of nitrosamines
but the impact on cancer rates
will not be known until the next decade, the
researchers
said.
They noted that excessive drinking has been found to double the
risk of cancer.
Drinkers were also more likely to smoke than
nondrinkers.
All 36,250 men in the study ranged in age from 40 to 60
when data collection
began between 1978 and 1983, and the researchers
later examined death
certificates.
They noted statistical
comparisons could have been skewed by the control group
of nondrinkers,
some of whom might have stopped drinking due to health problems
that
could have ultimately hastened their deaths.
As with other health
studies involving alcohol, the researchers were careful to
issue a
cautionary note.
``Because of the potential health hazards of any
alcoholic beverage, our results
suggesting that a few glasses of wine may
have salutary effects should not be
interpreted as an incentive to
drink,'' wrote study authors Serge Renaud and
Roger Salamon of the
National Institute for Health and Medical Research in
Bordeaux, and
Gerard Siest and Rene Gueguen of the Center of Preventive Medicine
in
Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy.
``If you drink alcoholic beverages, do so in
moderation, with meals and when
consumption does not put you or others at
risk,'' they wrote.
The study appeared in the Archives of Internal
Medicine, a journal published by
the American Medical
Association.