Cheers to health have taken on a new meaning after researchers at the University of Glasgow published a study revealing that drinking alcohol with meals could reduce people’s risk of death.
The study also found that those who chose to imbibe with wine had lower risks of death than those whose chief intoxicant was beer or hard liquor.
“These findings are important as they may have implications for policy and could allow health professionals to give patients tailored advice on various ways they can reduce the harm of their alcohol consumption,” Dr. Bhautesh Jani, who led the study, told the Daily Mail.
“Alcohol consumption is a leading contributor to death and disability worldwide, but previous research has not examined the effects of different patterns of alcohol consumption,” the report stated. “Red wine drinking, consumption with food and spreading alcohol intake over 3–4 days were associated with lower risk of mortality and vascular events among regular alcohol drinkers, after adjusting for the effects of average amount consumed.”
The study tracked more than 300,000 participants between 2006 and 2010 who participated in U.K. Biobank, a large, long-term study database. It excluded teetotalers and “infrequent” drinkers — those who drank fewer than one to three drinks in a given month.
Participants who drank predominantly hard liquor “were found to have a significantly higher adjusted relative risk of all-cause mortality” compared to those who preferred red wine — as much as 25% higher risk. Similar results were found in those who drank beer and cider more frequently.
Those who drank without food and who binged their drinking over the course of one or two days also had a higher mortality risk than those who drank during meals and who spread out their drinking over three or four days. Participants who drank with meals had a 10% lower risk of death, and those who spread out their drinking over four days had a 9% lower risk of death than binge drinkers.
The study was not without warnings for those who enjoy a glass of merlot with dinner — even among wine drinkers, those who drank at least one alcoholic beverage every day had a 9% higher mortality risk than those who limited their drinking. Daily drinkers also had a higher risk of liver cirrhosis.
The study concluded that more research would be necessary to understand what exactly about red wine reduced the risks typically associated with alcohol consumption, but it speculated that polyphenols, micronutrients found in very high concentrations in red wine, could play a role. Researchers also speculated that eating food with a glass of booze limits the rate at which alcohol is metabolized by the body and prevents “antioxidant mechanisms” from being disrupted.
