When it comes to health, wine wins over beer

The battle being fought in laboratories and tasting rooms around the world is between beer drinkers and wine drinkers.

Each side claims that their drink is the best, arguing over everything from taste to overall "classiness" of their libation of choice. Given that beer and wine are the two most popular alcoholic drinks in the U.S., it's safe to say that each drink has certain merits.

However, there is one area in which wine has a clear advantage, and that is when it comes to your health. While no one is suggesting that wine is a health food, or that someone who doesn't drink at all should take up imbibing vino just for the health of it, when consumed in moderation, wine does offer some clear benefits for our health that beer doe not.

Wine is good for your heart

While a Danish study in 2000 indicated that all forms of alcohol can lower the risk of heart disease, thanks to its ability to increase HDL cholesterol and hence reduce the thickening and hardening of the arteries, red wine was shown to be the most effective in preventing heart disease. Researchers chalk this up to the fact that red wine (and white wine, to a much lesser extent) contains tannin procyanin. This antioxidant encourages cell growth while also preventing plaque build-up in the arteries and reduces the risk of stroke and other serious heart problems. In fact, this antioxidant is believed to the be the explanation for the so called "French paradox," the fact that the French have lower rates of heart disease than people from other countries, despite diets that tend to be high in fat and cholesterol.

That's not to say that beer does not offer any heart benefits. A 2001 study indicated that beer does contain heart-healthy amounts of vitamin B6, which reduces the amount of the heart-disease causing amino acid homocysteine in the blood. However, this limited benefit pales in comparison to the proven and powerful benefits of red wine.

Beer contains natural antioxidants: phenolics (similar to some found in red wine) and compounds known as melanoidins, formed when barley or malt is heated and which give very characteristic colours and flavours to beers. But does a beer have the protective effects associated with moderate intake of red wine?

Population studies in beer-drinking communities of Australia and the Czech Republic have linked moderate beer drinking with reduced risk of heart disease.

In Dubbo, Australia, a ten-year study of nearly 3,000 men and women born before 1930 found that compared to non-drinkers, those who had a beer or two each day had almost a 20 pc lower risk of dying from heart disease.

And a recent study by Dr Martin Bobak of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, and colleagues, among male beer drinkers in the Czech Republic, found that men with the lowest risk of having a heart attack tended to drink daily and imbibed 4-9 litres (7-15 pints) of beer per week.