According to Decanter, the basis of this advice is drawn from findings by the INCA, the French national cancer institute, which says the consumption of even a small amount of alcohol can increase the risk of mouth and throat cancer by 168%.
INCA president Dominique Maraninchi said, 'Small daily doses of alcohol are the most harmful. There is no amount, however small, which is good for you.' He concedes that red meat, charcuterie and salt also increase the risk of colon-rectal cancer but at a much lower rate of up to 29%.
As may be expected, the French wine industry and experts have reacted negatively to the advisory.
Roger Corder, the British author of The Wine Diet and an acknowledged expert on the health benefits of wine, is reportedly surprised by the report. 'It covers all alcohol, not just wine. It is very flawed to base government health advice on such research, which lacks a detailed analysis of the influence, or risk, of drinking patterns for different alcoholic drinks and has at the same time excluded confounders such as poor diet and smoking,' he has said reportedly.
'This is the first time I have seen what amounts to scaremongering about the risks of moderate wine consumption from an organisation that should know the importance of basing health advice on detailed statistical analyses that considers overall risk. All large-scale studies have shown that moderate wine drinking is associated with a lower number of deaths from all causes,' he said
The General Association of Wine Producers, AGPV is peeved. Said Xavier de Volontat, president of the southern Languedoc wine producers association, 'the extremists must not be allowed to take consumers hostage.'
The editor of the French wine magazine La Revue du Vin de France (equivalent in popularity to Wine Spectator in the US and Decanter in the UK) Denis Saverot had accused his government last month of 'contempt' for French culture in a scathing attack and wondered 'what his country' the land of joie de vivre', had come to. He blamed French politicians and the health and pharmaceutical lobbies, as well as the wine industry itself.
The wine consumption has already been declining, having come down by 50% during the past 20 years. Italy has already overtaken France as the biggest wine producing nation. The advertisement laws have been increasingly against wine and alcohol marketing. The number of increasing driving accidents have been a cause of concern for the government. |