This morning we woke up to different headlines that speak of limiting the consumption of wine and beer on menus and restaurant menus. But, Wasn’t a glass of wine a day at mealtime good? Beer and wine will not be banned from menus, nor are these beverages good for your health.
The strategy is to promote non-alcoholic meals in bars, not ban them
Carolina Darias, Minister of Health of Spain has presented these days the draft of the Cardiovascular Health Strategy of the National Health System (ESCAV) that promotes the Mediterranean diet. This Mediterranean diet excludes alcohol, and therefore, beer and wine.
The proposal of the Ministry of Health is collaboration with catering establishments to promote a heart-healthy eating model. One of the proposed actions is offer tap water by default in bars and restaurants, instead of wine or beer. There are others such as regulating the content of vending machines in places such as educational centers or hospitals.
With this proposal, the affirmation of Luis Planas, Minister of Agriculture, who did include wine in the Mediterranean diet, is eliminated. In any case, the Ministry of Health states that the strategy recommends healthy habits and does not contemplate prohibitions of any kind.
Beyond political tasks, the doubt arises when on the one hand wine is recommended to us as heart-healthy, while on the other they want to limit its consumption. Is it good for health and for the heart drink a glass of wine a day with meals?
Drinking water with every meal is better for your heart than wine
If you want to improve your cardiovascular health a glass of wine is not the best idea. A few years ago, the news emerged that drinking wine while eating was better than not doing so, to the point that people who did not consume this drink regularly began to do so.
Aitor Sánchez created a comparison that could clarify this issue for us in five seconds: Drinking wine for its antioxidants is like eating hamburgers for the calcium in its sesame seeds. The hamburgers contain sesame seeds, a spectacular food for its nutritional characteristics.
How much sesame is in a burger relative to everything else? A tiny amount. The same thing happens with resveratrol (a component of wine and the main cause of all the fuss). A glass of wine has a tiny amount of this substance.
To reach adequate levels of resveratrol, and other bioactive components of grapes called polyphenols, we would have to drink several bottles of wine, just as we would have to eat several hamburgers to ingest just a few grams of sesame seeds.
Therefore, consume water with your daily meals. If at any time you feel like a glass of wine, enjoy it, but that glass of wine will not positively influence your cardiovascular system. Physical training, the Mediterranean diet and mental serenity will be great allies for our health.
In Vitónica | Even if you have read it in the press, it is not true: a glass of wine is not the same as an hour in the gym
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