Wine, no simplifications: “we must distinguish abuse from moderate consumption”

Stop with absolutist interpretations: it is increasingly more necessary, when it comes to wine, to distinguish between abuse and moderate consumption, analyzing it not as a simple alcoholic beverage but as an element embedded within a cultural and dietary model, the Mediterranean one, based on balance, moderation, and conviviality. This emerged from “Vino, salute e cultura del rischio: un approccio equilibrato” - “Wine, health and risk culture: a balanced approach”, a round table for scientific and cultural discussion held in recent days at the Abbey of Rosazzo (Udine) - a cultural and religious heritage site of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, which has entrusted the management of its vineyards to the historic Livio Felluga winery. The event brought together some of Italy leading scientists engaged in studying the relationships between wine consumption, dietary patterns, and health. “We are at a very interesting moment - explains professor Fulvio Mattivi, chemist and former full professor of food chemistry - because in Italy we have very advanced epidemiological studies, and a new discipline, metabolomics”. According to professor Fulvio Ursini, Emeritus Professor at the University of Padua, a “prohibitionist media campaign has been launched, negative not only for its impact on the economy and popular traditions, but above all from an ethical and communication point of view”.
The meeting addressed a topic at the center of public debate: the relationship between alcohol consumption and health, often interpreted through simplified lenses oriented toward so-called “zero risk”, “Wine is the juice of the fruit of fermented Vitis vinifera” - comments professor Fulvio Mattivi - three words: juice, fruit, fermented. It is not simply alcohol! It is a complex system of elements, including the beneficial bioactive compounds of grapes that we also find in supplements. This is a very important moment because, on one hand, there are positions more ideological than scientific, making it crucial to discuss ethical and methodological aspects. On the other hand, we are in a very interesting phase, since Italy has highly advanced epidemiological studies and a new discipline, which is “metabolomics” which has recently made available a new set of biomarkers which can be used in these studies to analytically verify the questionnaires through which participants report the quantity and patterns of alcohol consumption”. Fulvio Mattivi also drew attention to the risk of interpretive distortions in public policies, noting how some recent international campaigns tend to translate statistical data into generalized recommendations, sometimes not fully representative of the diversity of behaviors and consumption contexts.
According to Giovanni de Gaetano, president of Irccs Neuromed, the available epidemiological evidence indicates that, in the overall balance between benefits and risks, moderate wine consumption within the Mediterranean Diet is associated with favorable outcomes, even if within a complex framework that does not allow for simplified or deterministic interpretations.
The debate also emphasized that scientific data cannot be interpreted according to rigidly linear models: the relationship between dose and effect doesn’t necessarily follow a proportional progression but may vary depending on biological context and the organism adaptive responses. This principle, central to biomedical research, highlights the importance of considering the complexity of living systems when defining recommendations.
From a biological perspective, Fulvio Ursini stressed that the relationship between substances and health cannot be reduced to absolute categories. Biology shows that effects depend on dose and context: small stimuli can activate adaptive and strengthening mechanisms in the organism, while excess produces harmful effects. From this perspective, the need to avoid approaches focused exclusively on eliminating risk emerged, which may translate into prescriptive models poorly aligned with biological and cultural complexity. Health, it was stressed, instead requires interpretative tools capable of integrating scientific evidence, consumption contexts, and individual responsibility. “After the last conference on wine and health in 2010, we had already understood everything: all the positive components of wine, diet, and the relationship between wine and nutrition. Subsequently, two things happened: first, these conferences were imitated, but with people who knew little about wine and nutrition. Second, there was a prohibitionist media campaign, negative not only for its impact on the economy and popular traditions, but above all from an ethical and communication standpoint”, concludes Ursini.
The discussion therefore highlighted a shared point: health is not the result of the total elimination of risk, but of a balance between behaviors, lifestyles, and individual responsibility. In this framework, wine continues to represent a distinctive cultural element, whose consumption requires awareness, moderation, and contextualization.
Therefore, a further increasingly more relevant issue emerges: the ethics of scientific communication, which must be rigorous and capable of representing complexity, avoiding oversimplifications which risk weakening the quality of public debate.