Red Wine or White Wine; Which Is More Healthful?

Is red wine really more healthful than white wine, as is widely alleged? Or is white just as good for you as red? The answer, according to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, is possibly, maybe, no one knows for sure. Dr. Andrew Waterhouse, a wine chemist and director of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science at the University of California, Davis, tells the Journal’s Lettie Teague that the data needed to declare one type of wine more healthful than another is just not available. Waterhouse notes that several studies have “seemed to indicate” that the healthfulness trophy goes to the red, largely because red wine has more polyphenols than white, and polyphenols (resveratrol is one) are believed to be good for heart health. Other medical experts consulted by Teague cite studies that are similarly inconclusive, and similarly interesting. One study, for example, found that “white wine pours were 9.2% more generous than red wine pours.” Is that a good thing? The studies of that question are, yes, inconclusive. Read more in the Wall Street Journal.