If Americans need one-size-fits-all drinking advice based on the so-called "French Paradox," how about telling the truth? Drink like the French, die like the French.
Here's the news: The world's largest study of heart disease reveals that, most likely, French heart disease statistics used for that CBS report nearly 10 years ago were underestimated.The study, conducted by the World Health Organization during the past decade in 21 countries with 10 million men and women, is motivating French scientists to come forward and confirm the scary side of French drinking.
The issue of alcohol and health, which has become a cornerstone of marketing wine in America, is on the federal agenda. Between April and August, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will hold five public meetings throughout the nation to hear testimony before deciding whether a wine industry label on health effects should be legalized.
Beyond that, the bureau is expected to decide policy on using health claims in advertising alcoholic beverages.
The belief that alcohol is a prescription for health stems from the famous "60 Minutes" segment on the "French Paradox." It offered the conclusion that wine (red wine in particular) must be the reason the French can eat a suicidal diet of saturated fat, often in conjunction with heavy smoking but have fewer deaths than expected from heart disease.
One of the fathers of the "French Paradox" now believes the time has come to ban the expression his research team coined in the mid-'80s. Another of his countrymen, whose work helped make the "French Paradox" a household term, says that attributing a low rate of heart disease to daily consumption of wine or other forms of alcohol is wrong. If alcohol is involved, it is only one of many complex diet and lifestyle explanations.
While heart disease may be less pervasive in France than in many other countries, it is still the nation's No. 1 cause of death. Back in November 1991, the CBS story single-handedly rescued a faltering U.S. wine industry and embedded in the American consciousness the notion that moderate drinking lowers heart disease risk. Within a month, the sale of red wine increased by 44 percent.
The San Francisco-based Wine Institute seized the "French Paradox" and ran with it.
The Wine Institute touts its product today on its Web site with studies and press releases.
One quotes David Pittman, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis: "In societies such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, where wine and overall alcohol consumption is higher than in the United States, they just don't have as many alcohol-related problems such as drunk driving and underage drinking."
That would be news to France.
The French drink one-and-a-half times more per capita than Americans. Their death rate from liver cirrhosis is more than one-and-a-half times greater than that in the United States. Nearly 43,000 French people die each year from alcohol-related causes.
French drinking is decidedly unromantic to French health experts. Until there is scientific consensus on alcohol and health, we should ban any label suggesting such a connection.
Hilary Abramson, a veteran of newspaper journalism, now writes for the Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems.