So drinking wine will make you live longer?

In the news today is the announcement that if you drink half a glass of wine a day, you could live five years longer. Is this good news, I wonder, or is it just going to make us feel guilty if we drink a whole glass or worry if we don’t like wine?

The body has an interesting relationship with alcohol. On the one hand we are told it is good for our health, and on the other, the body treats alcohol as a toxin and works very hard to burn it off. In fact, in the pecking order of how the body burns the food and drink we consume, alcohol goes straight to the top of the queue, followed by carbohydrate and protein. Fat in our diet is the last food group to be used as fuel for energy as it is designed to be stored on our body in case we find ourselves in a famine. Fat provides us with an emergency energy supply and keeps us alive when other food sources run out.

Overall, despite often conflicting reports being published in the press, alcohol in moderation is good news for our health. I include a small amount of alcohol in my diets and I do not want to exclude any food group completely, but it should be treated as a treat and should be measured carefully otherwise you may be very surprised at how little, if any, weight you are losing.

Last year we launched a clever little product called Portion Pots® to help dieters quickly and easily measure their servings of foods such as cereal, rice, pasta and wine. The yellow Portion Pot® is the wine measure – a 125 ml measure. Whilst the food ‘portions’ were commented upon favourable, not so for the wine. ‘Is that it?’ people asked worryingly as they eyed up the size of the yellow pot. Why the surprise? It represents a standard pub measure of wine yet we would not dream of pouring such a measure for a friend or we would be thought we were being mean. With larger wine glasses becoming fashionable, we are used to having a much larger measure.

Like so many other foods we consume, we have become used to eating and drinking larger portions. If we are to look after our body, drinking moderately and eating smaller portions will help our weight and our health. Nobody can make us do it. We have to make the choice ourselves and we have to develop a new habit of moderation if we are going to stay healthy.

If you are interested in our Portion Pots®, just check out our website.