Winebits 751: The “more about wine and health” edition, because everybody’s talkin’ at me

This week’s wine news: More from the cyber-ether about wine and health — with sound effects

• Scientific proof? Lifehacker’s wine content has often come in for criticism on the blog, so I was quite pleased to find this, in a post called “7 Things Science Hasn’t Actually Proven are Healthy or Unhealthy” – drinking wine. Writes Stephen Johnson: ”Ultimately, it seems most accurate to say that the effect of having a glass of wine with dinner on your heart probably will be drowned out by the millions of other things you do when you’re not eating dinner.” In other words, fast food and Starbucks! Which, of course, I wish the Neo-Prohibitionists understood.

• Prohibition in India: The Indian state of Bihar, fed up with alcoholism and domestic violence, turned to prohibition in 2016. The results have been predictable, reports the New York Times: Bihar’s “judiciary is clogged with alcohol cases. The state is losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year in alcohol taxes. And liquor is still available — smuggled in and sold at double or triple the price.” The point here is not to defend alcoholism and domestic violence, but to remind everyone that the solution is not outlawing alcohol. The solution is education, as Mothers Against Drunk Driving have so amply demonstrated.

• Diageo and health: Diageo, one of the world’s biggest alcohol producers, says it cares about responsible drinking – really. It’s the key to retaining consumer loyalty in the post-pandemic world, according to the company’s new Spirit of Progress 2030 business plan. We can argue whether there’s a bit of a wink and a nudge going on here; does a $17 billion company actually care about this, unless it’s as a smokescreen for increased government regulation? But what’s more important, as we have also noted often on the blog, is that Diageo is going to get credit for something almost no wine company does save for the warning label on the back of the bottle.