For years now, we've been praising the health benefits of red wine, raising our glasses and toasting Merlot as bottles of white wine sit in the corner, fermenting with jealously. Because red wine has been known to have a positive impact on the human body, with particular benefits to the cardiovascular system, we drink it and we heart it.
Not to be outdone by its colorful adversary, studies have recently found white wine to be beneficial to health as well. While both red and white wine aid in lung function, white wine has a more positive impact on lung health.
According to a study by the American Thoracic Society, a positive link between white wine and lung health was found for people who drank between one and three glasses a day. These people possessed overall better lung function than those who drank red wine, or other alcoholic beverages. This study also took into account several other variables such as the wine drinker's general health, age, and whether or not they were a smoker.
Because white wine contains higher levels of flavonoids, a group of plant substances known for their antioxidant activity, researchers believe that white wine soaks up the toxins in the blood, like a "mop and glo" for the thorax, reducing inflammation of the airwaves in the process. This helps protect the lungs.
Drinking white wine may also be beneficial because of the presence of free radicals lurking in the human body. If antioxidants are the "peacekeepers" of the chemical compound world, with their main goal being to keep the body void of disease and destruction, free radicals are the bad seeds, often caught red-handed spraying graffiti of cancer and illness on internal organs. White wine, however, possesses the ability to stop the creation of free radicals, taking away their can of spray paint and leaving them enervated.
Article comments
1 - Victor Plenty
Every time I see one of these reports, I wonder what would happen if researchers ran a properly controlled study designed to compare the claimed health benefits of the wine in question (whether white or red) with the effect of drinking an equal amount of unfermented juice from the same kind of grapes.
I certainly don't wonder why no wine industry association has ever ponied up funding for such a study, however. That much seems pretty obvious.