Is wine okay?

[ctv]

Just curious if using wine in cooking is okay. Also I sometimes have a small glass of white wine at special events a couple times a year...is this okay? Thanks!

[colonyofcells]

Wine is junk food.

[roundcoconut]

If a few tablespoons of wine in your stirfry is what makes you wiling to eat the vegetables and eat the rice, then use it. There is some leeway to be less than perfect. Wine is never a recommended food, but I am hard-pressed to imagine that small quantities of wine are diffferent from any other condiment.

Drinking two glasses of wine a year is not going to reduce your life span in any meaningful way. I drank a glass of sangria the other day -- it was a mis-pour (i was waiting tables, and some woman had changed her mind about the sangria after it had already been poured). It was kinda yummy (this, coming from someone who will pour wine down the sink rather than drink it) and I am at zero risk for triggering an upward spiral of more and more sangria. It is not a dangerous pattern for me.

If you get the basics of starch-based eating with a lot of whole natural foods, you'll be eating healthfully 95% of the time. What you do with 5% of your overall calories, will not make or break your health.

Please read Jeff Novick's many, many posts on 5% of overall calories! That should put things into perspective. (Also please understand that if you want to use 5% of your daily calories on added sugar, then it would not be advisable to use another 5% of your daily calories on nuts, another 5% on wine, and another 5% on soy-based coffee creamer -- obviously, then you would be up to 20% of your diet coming from empty calories. See what I mean?

But anyone telling you that you cannot be in optimum health if you consume two glasses of wine a year, is maybe being a bit extreme.

Anyone telling you that small amounts of sugar can be added on top of your oatmeal, but small amounts of wine cannot be added to your mushrooms, has a bit of a double standard. Wine as a flavoring, as a condiment, is probably no better or worse than added sugar. Empty calories, but if kept in proportion to your overall intake, then totally fine and nothing to stress about!

[wade4veg]

Just curious if using wine in cooking is okay. Also I sometimes have a small glass of white wine at special events a couple times a year...is this okay? Thanks!

Goodness that is completely OK... Anyone who would suggest otherwise needs to show proof of harm from such a practice.

Indeed, I'd like to see the evidence that drinking a glass of wine (about 5 ounces) each day is harmful..... unless you have a need to more severely curtail calories.
I drink a glass of wine every night.
No indication is is bad and many publications indicate it is good for heart health.

Plus it tastes wonderful which in and of itself is a worthwhile effect... not mention the relaxing mood it induces.

[roundcoconut]

Indeed, I'd like to see the evidence that drinking a glass of wine (about 5 ounces) each day is harmful..... unless you have a need to more severely curtail calories.
I drink a glass of wine every night.
No indication is is bad ...

Not to be a wet blanket, but alcohol is now considered a class 1 carcinogenic, right up there with asbestos, arsenic, mustard gases and tobacco smoking. So clearly, there are people out there who have interpreted the preponderance of the evidence as indicating that a glass of wine a day is harmful to your long-term health.

The data that wine "may actually be beneficial to your health" has been tackled by Dr Greger, who believes that the blood thinner effect of wine, is only desireable if a person is eating a fatty and suboptimal diet to begin with. Someone who eats whole natural foods, no oil, does not improve their cardiovascular health by pouring wine down their piehole.

I may have some of my terminology wrong (I don't think Dr Greger says "piehole"), so feel free to go to the source and not take my word for it. But I wanna make sure we aren't propagating misinformation.

You are free to drink your wine for quality of life, if that is your choice, but when consumed daily, it is not considered to be a charming and harmless substance.

[wade4veg]

Indeed, I'd like to see the evidence that drinking a glass of wine (about 5 ounces) each day is harmful..... unless you have a need to more severely curtail calories.
I drink a glass of wine every night.
No indication is is bad ...

Not to be a wet blanket, but alcohol is now considered a class 1 carcinogenic, right up there with asbestos, arsenic, mustard gases and tobacco smoking. So clearly, there are people out there who have interpreted the preponderance of the evidence as indicating that a glass of wine a day is harmful to your long-term health.

The data that wine "may actually be beneficial to your health" has been tackled by Dr Greger, who believes that the blood thinner effect of wine, is only desireable if a person is eating a fatty and suboptimal diet to begin with. Someone who eats whole natural foods, no oil, does not improve their cardiovascular health by pouring wine down their piehole.

I may have some of my terminology wrong (I don't think Dr Greger says "piehole"), so feel free to go to the source and not take my word for it. But I wanna make sure we aren't propagating misinformation.

You are free to drink your wine for quality of life, if that is your choice, but when consumed daily, it is not considered to be a charming and harmless substance.

Went to Dr Greger... found nothing to indicate that wine is harmful.

re-"Not to be a wet blanket, but alcohol is now considered a class 1 carcinogenic, right up there with asbestos, arsenic, mustard gases and tobacco smoking."

What are you smoking? Have you left your brain in "full fear" mode....
Guess what, if you drink enough water you risk hyponatremia... as seen in amateur marathon runners.
Excessive drinking is indeed a problem and leads to various malady's.

However for the average person, a 5 ounce glass of wine is not a problem.
But further, comparing it to "asbestos, arsenic, mustard gases and tobacco smoking" suggest you need to re-calibrate your entire method of approaching diet and science in general.
A little perspective please... You seem in danger of some type of disorder where nearly anything is dangerous.
In California we have signs all over as the result of a misguided ballot proposition.. Prop 65...
You see it everywhere... in every business... warning about the cancer dangers.... EVERYWHERE..
Even health conscious consumers laugh at the Prop 65 signage.

read the following https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130 ... g-is.shtml
Then take a careful assessment of your thinking.

[Hal]

Not sure if it's OK, or harmful.
However, a recent study of studies that suggest moderate amounts of alcohol could be beneficial to health, discovered that the correlation was not due to health benefits of alcohol, but rather that people who live a 'moderate' lifestyle tend to be healthier than those who don't, and people who drink regularly, but only in moderation have a generally moderate approach to life in general.
They discovered in this latest study that there is no health benefit to alcohol.
Having said that, Dr. Esselstyn has stated that a drink a day is OK (in terms of cardiovascular) on his plan.

[Spiral]

Wine consumption increases ones risk of various kinds of cancers. Think of how much damage alcohol has done to people. Once you reflect on that, it's pretty easy to avoid alcohol.

[roundcoconut]

Nope, not smoking anything weird or engaging in any fringe science. There is much data on moderate alcohol consumption and incrreased cancer risks.

This thread has a lot of links. You are free to consume the amount of wine that makes life worth living to you, but it is widely considered to be associated with higher risk of cancer. It's not just me promoting fringe theories or outlandish ideas!

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=44058&p=453872&hilit=Alcohol+carcinogenic#p453869

[Cora]

I have a half glass of wine with dinner for two reasons:

1. I enjoy it.
2. I have IBS and a bit of wine with my meal helps me digest my food better even on a starch-based diet.

I think we all have to find what's right for us - what works for us. Someone once said (can't remember who) that you can eat the best, purest, cleanest organic food on the planet but if you're pissed off while you're eating it, it will just turn to pure organic stress which is poison to the body. I'm paraphrasing. I think there's a lot of wisdom in that, so, what I took away from it is, if you're a person who is able to limit yourself to half a glass of wine or a couple of bites of meat or WHATEVER is considered a no-no, it's not a deadly sin to indulge if it makes you happy because the happier and more satisfied you are overall, the healthier you'll be regardless what you eat -- generally speaking. Obviously the bulk of your food has to be healthy. Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying here.

Having said that, if you do not have the self-discipline to be satisfied with just a couple ounces of wine -- or whatever -- then don't tempt yourself. Again, we all have to find and do what is best for us as individuals. There really is no one size fits all and to say there is, is wrong because we all have different heath challenges and even on this diet some of us do well on one starch while others are allergic, etc. So each body is slightly different and so one food can do miracles for one body and that same food can make another body very sick -- I'm talking the foods allowed on the McDougall plan.

I'll stop rambling -- I hope that made sense and it won't be misinterpreted as if I'm telling people to drink wine and eat meat. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you have to do what's healthiest for your body and mind and, it's my opinion, that for some people, completely abstaining from all the "red light foods" is not the healthiest choice. Again, in my case, a bit of red wine aids my digestion so, for me, it's a healthy addition to my meal. You can disagree but I know what makes my tummy feel and function best.

[roundcoconut]

I'm not sure I really buy the argument that a Twinkie eaten with love, works better for your overall health than a sweet potato eaten with neutral affect.

If that is true, I would expect it to be scalable -- are five Twinkies, eaten with love, better than five sweet potatoes, eaten with neutral affect? What about ten twinkies, eaten with love, versus ten sweet potatoes, eaten with neutral affect?

I can SEE the use of personal preference to fill out the margins of your diet:
If you chop up half a twinkie and sprinkle it on your oatmeal twice a week, is any long-term harm going to result? Prob not.

But the argument that food eaten with love, cannot or will not be processed in the body as an unhealthy substance, sounds like rationalizing. When heart doctors like Esselstyn are working with people with major CVD, they are in tight territory, where eating cheese can very much trigger another heart attack. Cheese is not good for heart patients -- not one piece, not five pieces, not ten pieces.

The body just processes foods in a very particular way. It is biological, not psychological.

[colonyofcells]

Many people are unable to use wine in moderation which is probably why Dr Mcdougall never recommends wine to anybody.

[Cora]

I'm not sure I really buy the argument that a Twinkie eaten with love, works better for your overall health than a sweet potato eaten with neutral affect.

If that is true, I would expect it to be scalable -- are five Twinkies, eaten with love, better than five sweet potatoes, eaten with neutral affect? What about ten twinkies, eaten with love, versus ten sweet potatoes, eaten with neutral affect?

I can SEE the use of personal preference to fill out the margins of your diet:
If you chop up half a twinkie and sprinkle it on your oatmeal twice a week, is any long-term harm going to result? Prob not.

But the argument that food eaten with love, cannot or will not be processed in the body as an unhealthy substance, sounds like rationalizing. When heart doctors like Esselstyn are working with people with major CVD, they are in tight territory, where eating cheese can very much trigger another heart attack. Cheese is not good for heart patients -- not one piece, not five pieces, not ten pieces.

The body just processes foods in a very particular way. It is biological, not psychological.

I knew my post would be misunderstood even though I said 'please don't misunderstand what I'm saying.'

I am not talking about twinkies. Obviously the majority of our food must be healthy REAL food. You can't live on twinkies no more than you can live on wine. However, there is a big difference between a twinkie and a glass of wine even though this group might not believe it. Twinkies contain man-made chemicals wheras organic wine contains fermented grapes. People have been drinking wine since before Jesus came to the world -- even peasants in most cultures drank wine.

I'm not saying everyone should drink wine and obviously, as with anything else, too much wine will cause harm. But even water, which is necessary for life, can kill you if you drink too much of it at once.

My point was that if she enjoys a glass of wine on special occasions, as she indicated in her post, who are we to say she shouldn't? She has to find out if her body agrees with it or not. We can't possibly know.

Maybe someone should do a study on if you eat a twinkie feeling love and eat a potato feeling angry/depressed/unsatisfied... what the effect is on the body.

[Cora]

I forgot to add that if you don't believe your state of mind affects the health of your body, you should look at Dr. Joe Dispenza's work.

[roundcoconut]

Yes, I definitely agree that a couple glasses of wine a year is fine!

I wouldn't necessarily agree that daily consumption of wine is harmless.

And actually, I can appreciate the idea that the mind and the body are very much related and connected. I do not in any way pooh-pooh new agey approaches -- I practice certain new agey approaches but leave the rest behind.

I am parrticularly fond of getting reiki treatments and while I don't know of any hard science to suggest that reiki is "real", I don't think I'm hurting anyone by doing so. Some reiki practitioners reiki their food, and I can see why they would do that -- I think that is just fine.

On a side note, I have participated in zen buddhist retreats where we were required to bow to our food. I don't know why, but that just makes me roll my eyes. Cheeseball, feelgood "wisdom" for the orient -- not my thing!