JUST FOLLOW THE SCIENCE
Not all that long ago, we were told of something called the French Paradox. Epidemiological studies in the early 1990s cast light on this interesting phenomenon. Despite the fact that the French consume a diet high in saturated fats, rates of cardiovascular disease were startlingly low. Two medical researchers, Serge Renaud and Michel de Lorgeril, proposed an hypothesis to explain the paradox: as the French are the world’s most legendary wine drinkers, moderate consumption of the national drink may have accounted for the relative rarity of coronary heart disease. A certain polyphenol found in wine – known as resveratrol – received much of the credit. Rich red wines happened to have the highest levels of the healthy polyphenol. Armed with the irresistible descriptor “the French paradox,” journalists around the world helped spread the news, and soon you could hear the joyful roar of corks popping on both sides of the ocean. Ooo-la-la, wine was very good for you.
The celebration happened to correspond with Americans’ grand discovery of all-things-wine. The CBS news staple “60 Minutes” aired one of the earliest stories announcing the French paradox. News of the paradox helped kindle smoldering interest in wine into a full-fledged conflagration. Within a year of the CBS report and dozens of follow-ups in papers and magazines, American consumption of red wine jumped 40%. The market, of course, responded. In 1980, the U.S. possessed a mere 1,000 wineries. By 2010 there were 8,000, and the U.S. overtook France as the world’s largest per capita consumer.
Not all of the burgeoning interest, of course, can be attributed to the news that generous helpings of resveratrol might forestall heart disease, but one fact about our country was surely implicated in the sudden wine explosion: we are a nation of fads, and there are no fads more compelling to us than health fads – especially those that appear to rest on science. The two researchers, Renaud and de Lorgeril, published their initial article under the title “Wine, alcohol, platelets, and the French paradox for coronary heart disease.” The article appeared in the prestigious British science journal Lancet – a fact which added to its credibility. Once pedigreed journalists started running with it, the news became a veritable rallying cry. Raise a glass to heart-health, kids! Glug glug.
Today, three decades later, the French paradox has collapsed. Further analyses of the epidemiological data showed that the original researchers had based their findings on flawed and misinterpreted statistics. For example, laboratory mice did indeed show reduced levels of cardiovascular disease when fed quantities of the resveratrol polyphenol, but the quantities were so high that human wine drinkers would have to consume hundreds of glasses of wine a day to achieve similar benefits (assuming the alcohol-soaked drinkers lived long enough for measurements). Moreover, French doctors recorded coronary disease deaths differently from the tracking used by American and British doctors – creating a statistical illusion. For those and other reasons, the red wine bubble burst.
Today we’re told that alcohol in any amount, delivered in any way – wine, beer, hard liquor, the works – is unsafe. There seem to be no mitigating factors associated with wine or anything else. Mocktails are having a field day; NA beer is the fasting rising segment of the brewing industry. In fact, even the repeated use of the word “alcohol” is now associated with horrendous diseases and certain early death. I’ll stop typing the word here shortly for fear that I will plunge face-first onto my keyboard.
I have lived in wine country for the past 25 years, during which time I have watched the fascinating rise and fall of the industry in little Walla Walla. Not so long ago, we were dubbed “the next Napa” by a goodly segment of the wine press – and with good reason. When Dorothy and I arrived here in 2001, the valley had sixteen bonded wineries, and the place was beginning to explode as a wine tourism destination. Over the next decade and a half, the local winery census swelled to more than 125; we stood in awe as Lear jets frequented the skies above our town’s tiny airport. But no more. The industry here, as elsewhere, is in retreat.
Just yesterday at the farmers market, I ran into a wine-maker friend I had not seen since my retirement from teaching. He opened a fine, boutique operation around a decade ago, sought to make wines from grape varieties that defied the same-old same-old (Bordeaux blend reds), and received great reviews from the wine press. Like many such start-ups, he tried biding his time until he could afford to expand and open a tasting room. It never happened. He told me, sadly, that he decided to close up shop. The factor he noted was, more than any thing, “healthy choices” among the younger generation. (His steady gaze at me seemed to signal his skepticism over healthy choices among the older generation.)
I was about to say, “this too shall pass,” but held my tongue. He is no doubt not in a spot financially to weather the fad, or to think things might change back any time soon. I could only join him in a silent eulogy as we both bought bags of Power Greens from the stand where we were shopping.
And it is a fad, I insist. If the idea of human nature means anything, across all time and most cultures, it surely means inebriation. We are the earth’s one mammal that adores getting fucked up in the head. With great regularity. The anti-alcohol thing is a fad; we have seen it before, and it too shall pass.
What got me thinking about all of this was a recent New York Times report that the federal health department just “flipped the food pyramid” upside down. Red meat, cheese, and whole milk are now the things to eat; saturated fats are fine (fry with beef tallow!); fats derived from seeds are not (health hazards galore!). The great diet push-back has arrived – to the great delight of every steakhouse owner in America.
That same issue of the Times also reported on the reversal of federal warnings about the consumption of alcohol. Until very recently, we drinkers faced that sobering news that alcohol in any amount is dreadful – linked to seven different forms of cancer. Earlier guidelines warned that men and women should obey distinctly different standards of consumption – no more than two drinks a day for men and just one for women as women metabolize alcohol differently – but the point was to emphasize strict standards and limits, and the trend was strongly toward complete abstinence. People were listening, as my wine-maker friend can attest. Alcohol consumption plummeted. In 2023 62 percent of Americans said they consumed alcohol. A year later, only 54 percent said so, according to the Gallup Poll. Fifty-three percent now believe that even a drink or two a day is bad for you, more than double the percentage who thought so in 2011. But the new federal guidelines, just issued alongside the tallow-is-good report, back away entirely from the abstinence-is-best position, declaring only that people should consume less alcohol “for better overall health.” No mention of clear limits; no mention of the link between alcohol and cancer. Bottoms up, sports fans.
It’s no wonder people get confused. Hell, I’m confused. I want to go with the best science, but the very idea of a “best science” long ago began to feel absurd to me. Authorities and experts are as prone as anyone else to working from biases. The full-court press against alcohol smacked to me all along of neo-Prohibitionism. As I was raised around Mormons and now live in a town rich with teetotaling Adventists, I have a certain radar for all condemnations of John Barleycorn. Prohibitionism was and is a moral holy war as much as a heath admonition. The urge to stem everyone’s drinking never dies; it just goes underground. When cultural conditions are ripe, it shoots up again. Lately, it has been a geyser, propelled in part by credulous journalists who are ever willing to pen sentences that begin, “Scientists now say....” And lots of people take it to heart.
I have relatives who leapt on the Adkins Diet bandwagon some years ago. They all lost a lot of weight and all gained it back. I know a fitness trainer who swears by keto – and will tell anyone who wants to listen everything they don’t want to know about it. I had a steady stream of students who adhered righteously to all sorts of diets. Paleo was big for a time. Macrobiotics reared its little bean-shaped head, then disappeared. I had one student whose mother taught her how to spell ovolactovegetarian; she and Mother were both ovolactovegetarians (I do like typing that word). Veganism came to stay, no matter how dreary. But I can count all my vegan acquaintances on one hand. I had a friend in Montana – a friend with a doctorate degree – who, just a few years ago, confidently predicted the end of the American beef industry when plant-based “meats” came on the scene and started popping up in grocery stores. Where I live, those strange zombie cuts quietly vanished and have not reappeared. Recently I read an essay in the Wall Street Journal commenting on the revival of the real cigarette in the wake of the vaping collapse. It was all news to me – first that vaping had collapsed, second that young people have taken up smoking. The writer ended with line hoping the cig-fad doesn’t last long. But isn’t that the main thing about fads?
It all smacks to me of the pyramid fad back in the early 70s. Perhaps you are old enough to remember claims about the amazing power of the architectural pyramid. We learned on good authority that pyramid shapes concentrate energy to mummify organic matter. Just look at, well, mummies. You could prove the claim yourself by constructing a small, properly scaled pyramid at home and placing a banana inside, but you had to get the cosmic alignment on the ground exactly right, just as the ancient Egyptians did. The banana would never darken or rot; it would gradually turn into a desiccated ‘nana-mummy, which at the time was thought to be food of the pharaohs. We later saw further evidence when local natural food co-ops began stocking banana chips.
I also remember when Paul McCartney died. We knew he was dead because in the photo on the Abbey Road cover – that iconic pic of the Fab Four crossing the street – he was dressed in a suit but had bare feet. And his eyes were closed. Dead giveaway, so to speak. You could also spin the White Album backwards on your turntable, and one passage in the song “Revolution 9" clearly announced “Turn me on, dead man.” Or not so clearly maybe, but if that was what you were expecting to hear, you heard it.
Tonight before supper – a nice slab of red meat – I’ll raise a glass to the Hula Hoop. You remember the Hula Hoop. Don’t you?