Study challenges benefits of wine consumption

By Angus Chen, NPR

You’ve probably heard that a little booze a day is good for you. I’ve even said it at parties. “Look at the French,” I’ve said gleefully over my own cup. “Wine all the time and they still live to be not a day younger than 82.”

I’m sorry to say we’re probably wrong. The evidence that alcohol has any benefit on longevity or heart health is thin, says Timothy Naimi, a physician and epidemiologist at Boston Medical Center.

He and his colleagues published an analysis 87 of the best research studies on alcohol’s effect on death from any cause in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs on Tuesday. “[Our] findings here cast a great deal of skepticism on this long, cherished belief that moderate drinking has a survival advantage,” he says.