When you go to pop open that chilled bottle of merlot, you don’t typically think of how healthy and nutritious it may be. Knowing what we know about similar alcoholic beverages, thinking about the nutrition of a wine glass sounds like a one-way ticket to Dread City. But what if I told you wine can be good for you? And no, this is not another one of my bad excuses to drink wine every day. Word around the block is…wine can actually be good for you! The question then is, how? Let’s dive into the supposed health benefits of wine and what types are considered the most healthy.
How Is Wine Good For You?
Despite wine’s apparent health benefits, drinking too much alcohol can lead to various health issues, so as much as wine can benefit your health, this is only if you drink in moderation. Health guidelines recommend a maximum of one glass a day for women, and two glasses a day for men. Overdrinking will have the opposite health effects, increasing your risk of heart issues, breast cancer, gastrointestinal cancers, and liver disease. In order to avoid these adverse effects, ensure that you drink moderately.
Now you’re all wondering: how is it possible that wine can be good for you? First of all, various substances within wine work as antioxidants, and that includes the alcohol content, believe it or not! You’ve probably heard of antioxidants before, but you may not know completely how they work or what the benefits are. Antioxidants protect you against unstable molecules, which are responsible for damaging cells. In simple terms, unstable molecules cause issues like aging or illness, and antioxidants naturally help prevent and eliminate these molecules from the body. Let’s go over each of the health benefits antioxidants have.
Preventing Illness
Several studies have shown that antioxidants can help prevent a large array of naturally occurring illnesses. When I say they prevent illness, I don’t mean just the common flu or seasonal colds. Antioxidants can prevent cardiovascular diseases and circumvent the occurrence of strokes or heart attacks.
Vision Loss
Vision loss often occurs naturally with aging, this process is formally known as age-related macular degeneration. Antioxidants can help break down the unstable molecules that cause macular degeneration.
Skin Damage
Newer studies suggest that antioxidants could potentially be beneficial for the skin. Specifically, it is believed that it may be able to help with improving the appearance of wrinkles, UV protection, reduce dark spots, and increase moisture retention.
Different Types Of Wine: Most to Least Healthy
Of all the types of wine on the market today, which ones can be considered ‘healthy’? Let’s break down four popular wine types based on their level of healthiness.
Red Wine
Red wine lovers rejoice! It takes the first place spot for healthiness. A lot of the health benefits of wine we mentioned earlier are thanks to red. No surprise, red wine contains the most antioxidants of all the wine types. This is because, unlike other variations, red wine keeps the grape skins during the fermentation process. Grape skins happen to be rich in antioxidants, the more you know! It’s not just antioxidants either, red grape skins have the chemical resveratrol, which acts very similar to antioxidants in preventing age-related heart issues.
Orange Wine
Orange wine has grown in popularity in recent years, famously known as “white wine made like red wine”. This is because orange wine is made from white wine grapes but fermented the same way red wine is – with the skins. Yes, it appears these grape skins are the key to everything health-wise. We call these types of wines “skin contact wine”. If you haven’t tried orange wine already, it deserves a whole blog of its own. It has a fascinating flavour profile that differs greatly from the more popular white and red wines. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the citrus undertones here. Give it a shot if you haven’t already.
Rosé
Of the red grape family, rosé gets our third spot. Rosé is one of those trusty skin-contact wines I mentioned earlier. However, it has less skin time than red or orange wines, which means less antioxidants overall.
White Wine
Oh white wine, where did it all go wrong? White wine is the least healthy wine because, you guessed it, no grape skins here. White wine has not nearly as many antioxidants as red wine, orange wine, or rosé. The skin is removed during fermentation, which means white wine is getting less of those nutrients. Not all is lost though, white wine still has some antioxidants. Dry whites are the healthiest of the white wines, since they contain less sugar than sweet whites.
Wine may not be the key to solving all our health worries, but that doesn’t mean we can’t partake in other antioxidant rich food and drink. Some other foods that are high in antioxidants are spinach, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, artichokes, cabbage, asparagus, avocados, radishes, and even more. We’d be here all day if I named them all. The best part – unlike wine, you can have as much of these foods as you want. Make a good meal with them and pair it with our antioxidant king red wine. Now we can drink to that, right?
To living a full-bodied life,
Wesley