Wedding Bells

This past weekend the last of my best friends got married! Despite the call for bad weather, just as she was about to walk down the aisle (on an outdoor patio) the sun came out, the wind died down and the rain held off and she had the sunset ceremony she had hoped for! I had 3 glasses of wine, went home and threw up then couldn't get off the couch until 4pm. I don't drink much. But at the reception, I mentioned to someone how I felt guilty drinking the wine because of the chemicals. He informed me that wine is from grapes and therefore all natural. I was skeptical. So I decided to check it out.

I Googled "chemicals in wine" and found this site. It's written by an Australian Naturopathic Nutritionist and he actually uses the term "chap" in his article so you KNOW he's reputable! He spent two years researching wine and health and the "French Paradox" (the way the French have such low levels of heart disease but eat a diet rich in saturated fat and cholesterol.) He cites multiple studies in his article and has a lot more infomation than I'm summarizing here, but overall, he says wine it good for you, in moderation of course, because of the anti-oxidents which counter the free-radicals. He says it better, "Frankel's team reported in the British Medical Journal in 1993 that the phytonutrients in wine, with names like Flavonoids and Resveratrol, significantly inhibited the oxidation of lipids (ie. fats & oils) and cholesterol in human blood. It should be mentioned that a primary cause of cardiovascular disease is oxidative damage to the artery walls caused by oxidised or rancid lipids and cholesterol in the bloodstream, causing the artery walls to become inflamed, leading to the build-up of plaque that narrows the artery."

He goes on to talk about people with wine allergies and what can cause them. "These sufferers restrict their consumption of wine because of headaches, facial flushing, sinus problems and other negative reactions." (Would those "other negative reactions" include drunk dialing and yelling when you think you're whispering?) This is where the discussion about chemicals come in. "Chemicals that are permitted by law for use in winemaking include pesticides, herbicides, equipment cleaning chemicals, and sulphite preservatives." Just like with other juices, those @%$# pesticides are lurking in your wine. I didn't know this, but "grapes used in winemaking are not washed. This may come as a surprise to many people, who would naturally assume that grapes are washed after picking but prior to fermentation to remove all traces of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides. Sadly, that is not the case. The obvious question is "Why not wash the grapes?" Unfortunately this is not possible, as grapes are normally 'machine harvested' and the grape skins are damaged by the picking equipment and grape juice is released. In other words, the collection containers are filled with damaged grapes in a sort of liquid mush, and there in no way that the grapes can be washed." Suddenly, those organic wines don't look so expensive after all! And of course we need to add preservatives to our food. In wine they are sulfides. "As a simple rule, any wine that is capable of being shipped long distances and stored in hot tropical 40c temperatures, will need high levels of preservative sulphites to stop the wine from deterioration. Such high preservative levels can be a culprit in what we call 'restaurant syndrome' and most consumers have experienced the ill effects of a good night out." He then goes on to talk about the alcohol that's in wine and how the liver cleans it out and what to do to aid that process (lots of water and B vitamins...which would have been helpful to me YESTERDAY!)

So I guess wine is like everything else out there. If you drink the conventional wine, you're going to have pesticides and preservatives in there, but if you're drinking organic you're not.