c/ScienceNutrition · by Krusty@quokk.au · 23d

Wine, beer, or spirits? Massive study finds a surprising health divide

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260808235008.htm

A study tracking more than 340,000 adults for over a decade found that heavy drinking increased the risk of death regardless of beverage type. At lower levels, however, the picture became more surprising: beer, cider, and spirits were linked to higher mortality, while wine was associated with lower risk. Moderate wine drinkers had a 21% lower risk of cardiovascular death compared with people who rarely or never drank.

5 points · 4 comments · view on lemmy.world

4 Comments

Zachariah@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 23d (3 replies)

Did they cover whether the wine drinkers were more affluent and therefore had better healthcare?

partial_accumen@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 23d (2 replies)

From the article:

Drinking habits and lifestyle may also play an important role. Wine is more often consumed with meals and tends to be favored by people with higher-quality diets and healthier behaviors overall. Spirits, beer and cider are more commonly consumed outside of meals and were associated with poorer overall diet quality and other lifestyle risk factors.

...and...

"Taken together, these factors suggest that the type of alcohol, how it is consumed and the associated lifestyle behaviors all contribute to the observed differences in mortality risk," Chen said.

The "lifestyle" impacts seems to be quite a large confounding variable to cast doubt on the article's conclusion even if the study's authors didn't lean that hard into the article's conclusion.

Zachariah@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 23d

Thank you for the info. Saved me a click.

Vandals_handle@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 23d

Too lazy to dig but I remember study(ies?) saying plain grape juice had the same benefits as wine. Concluded compounds in the grapes provide benefits, not the alcohol. Don't remember if or how socioeconomic factors were taken into account