Why a glass of wine with food hits the sweet spot

A lot of wellness influencers are giving up booze and they are banging on about why, for a host of reasons, weight gain is one of them, with some claiming wine is ‘a glass full of sugar’. Well, it’s not, at least not all of it.

Most European wines are fermented dry, which means all the sugar is converted to alcohol. Unless, like me, you have a penchant for Sauternes, with high levels of residual sugar, but that’s another delicious story.

In Bordeaux, Blanc, Red, Rosé and Clairet are obliged to ferment dry, down to a maximum of 3g of residual sugar per litre (with certain exceptions). The vast majority are lower.

To put this in context, there’s 106g of sugar in a litre of coke and other sodas, and about 65g in a litre of orange juice, so wine contains far less sugar than sodas and sweet cocktails made using syrups.

New packaging laws mean all European wine producers must label ingredients, often via a QR code. For wine makers, this is an opportunity, not a nuisance. Most consumers don’t know what’s in their glass and, thanks to current anti-alcohol propaganda many fear the worst. With quality dry wine they are in for a very pleasant surprise.

But what about the calories in alcohol?

During fermentation, sugar in the grape juice (must) is transformed into alcohol. It takes 2 grams of sugar to produce 1 gram of alcohol. Each gram of sugar contains 4 calories, a gram of alcohol contains about 7 calories. The missing calories produce heat (hence the importance temperature-controlled fermentation vats) and are used by busily reproducing yeast cells doing the fermentation.

Sugar obsessed

The obsession with and the ‘danger’ of sugar goes beyond calories. It’s about the spike it causes in blood sugar levels. This triggers insulin levels to rise to try and get sugar (glucose) out of the blood and into cells that need it for energy. The excess is sent to the liver, which transforms it into glycogen for storage. With too much sugar in your blood, insulin can’t cope and sugar levels spike. If those levels remain high, the pancreas can’t produce enough insulin, cells become insulin resistant and don’t take up sugar from the blood. This results in inflammation and all sorts of downstream issues such as type 2 diabetes.

This isn’t limited to pure sugar. All type of carbohydrates (bread, pasta, rice, etc.) are transformed into simple sugars thanks to our digestive system, which breaks down complex sugars into simple ones. This is where things get interesting. Depending on what you serve with your carbs, that spike happens more or less quickly. If you can keep it slow and steady it’s less harmful.

Fats, proteins and fibre all help to slow down the pace at which sugar is released. It’s why oil on your pasta, salad with your chips, and fibre-rich fruit such as berries are a less dangerous source of sugar. And so, it appears, is booze.

Slowing down

We know drinking wine with food slows down the absorption of alcohol. When you drink liquids with no food, they slip through the stomach quickly into the small intestine, where most of the alcohol absorption takes place. But the stomach holds on to food for longer than liquid, allowing digestive enzymes time to work. When consumed with food, alcohol also stays longer in the stomach, giving enzymes time to breakdown some alcohol before it reaches the small intestine. Absorption of alcohol into the blood stream is therefore much slower.

And it gets better.

I learnt something else fascinating last week. It appears having a glass of wine with carbohydrates, reduces sugar spikes compared to eating food alone. The science behind this is that your clever liver is trying to get rid of alcohol (ethanol), by breaking It down via the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme. It is transformed into toxic acetaldehyde that needs to be removed from the system asap. Due to this toxicity, the liver prioritises processing alcohol over breaking down carbs and releasing sugar into the blood, reducing and slowing down sugar spikes

Polyphenols and the Mediterranean diet

The same wellness influencers also keep telling us how good the Mediterranean diet is for us. Lots of veg, fruit, protein,olive oiland wine are all part of the magic formula that keeps those centenarians going in theBlue Zones(I’m simplifying but it’s not far from the truth).Polyphenols, plant based antioxidants that are so good for our health, are key to the success of this ‘diet’.

A glass of wine with your colourful veggies?

It appears that drinking alcohol with brightly coloured veg and virgin olive oil increases our absorption of the polyphenols they contain. We know polyphenols in red wine are more bioavailable (easier to absorb) than drinking grape juice. This is because alcohol produced during fermentation extracts polyphenols from the grape skins, pips and occasionally stalks, making them easier for us to absorb. Something similar happens when you have a glass of wine with polyphenol rich foods, we absorb them more easily.

We can stop worrying about wine being calorie-laden, choose it dry, enjoy it in moderation with food, and bask in a polyphenol rush, not a sugar rush.

I’ll drink to your good health.

If you’d like to learn more about wine and wellness, why not join Sally Evans and I on the ‘Flourish Retreat’ in Saint Emilion next March? There’s an early bird offer until the end of the year so don’t hang about! Sign up here to receive future posts and be the first to receive news about the revamped Online programme ‘A Life Well Poured’. In the meantime you can buy The Drinking Woman’s Diet book here or on Amazon.

The above are my personal opinions, I am not a doctor, any changes to your diet or supplement regime should be undertaken on advice from a health professional.