A good place to start any wine conversation in this country is the price. Why is it almost impossible to get a good bottle of wine in this country under Shs40,000? As it turns out, the reason for this is extremely high taxes. All imported wine is charged a 100 percent tax or Shs10,000 per litre, whichever is higher.
This, if you ask anyone, is too high. A study that was published IN 2024 found that drinking wine with meals was associated with lower overall death rates and specifically from cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
The study, which was published in a monthly open-access, peer-reviewed general medical journal titled JAMA Network Open, also found that drinking wine, even when it is not accompanying a meal reduces chances of getting sickly, especially for older persons. This would be good reason to ditch beer and spirits for some of us, but we are stuck in our ways.
The study was done by investigators from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Spain. In the study, 135,000 UK residents above the age of 60 were analysed in terms of their drinking habits, hoping to see the effect of alcohol use on two categories of people: frail older individuals and those with lower socioeconomic status.
As expected, the researchers found that older people and those from lower socioeconomic status had a great overall chance of dying, if they drank alcohol, and a greater chance of dying from cancer or from cardiovascular disease.
The more they drank, the higher their risk of death from all causes, as well as from cancer and cardiovascular disease.
However, what was surprising was that when they specifically looked at people who drank mostly wine and those who took wine with meals, they found that those people enjoyed lower overall death rates.
The effect of drinking wine or drinking wine only during meals on individuals, who were neither frail nor in lower socioeconomic classes, was equally associated with a reduced risk of death from all causes, as well as from cancer and from cardiovascular disease.
The trick with wine, the study found, was that although the alcohol in wine is chemically the same as the alcohol in other alcoholic beverages, the amount that reaches the blood stream is minimised when it comes to wine, especially when drank at meal time.
The reason this is the case is because wine tends to have lower concentrations of alcohol compared to spirits, meaning that at the end of a drinking session, a person has consumed considerably lower alcohol.
And compared to beer for instance, which mostly has lower concentrations of alcohol than wine, wine is typically consumed with meals and drank over longer periods of time, while beer is often gulped fast and taken in huge amounts.
The study found that drinking wine (or any other alcohol) with a meal and taking it slow help in lessening blood alcohol levels.
The study concluded that it makes sense that individuals who drink mostly wine or do so with meals typically have lower blood alcohol levels, and for that reason, have better health outcomes compared to people who chug jugfuls of beer for instance, or endless shots of tequila or whiskey on a typical night out.
There you have it. A glass of wine a day or a week is not a bad thing afterall, whether you are an older individual (above 60) or younger. Perhaps every time you go grocery shopping, you should consider returning home with a bottle or box of wine, together with your fruits, meats and diary products.
If this study is anything to go by, a glass of wine with your dinner would be as healthy as the first fruit you eat on an empty stomach in the morning.
It may be true what they say after all; that moderate drinking protects the heart. And wine achieves that. But first, someone tell government the health benefits of wine so that they can cut the taxes down. It needs to be cheaper for these benefits to be enjoyed.
Do wine with meals
Not bad after all. However, what was surprising was that when they specifically looked at people who drank mostly wine and those who took wine with meals, they found that those people enjoyed lower overall death rates.’’
