Wine and health: hurray for the Mediterranean tradition

Beyond the dose: the debate grows (and gets more complicated)

In a previous editorial of mine I had placed at the center an issue that is as simple as it is often ignored: the risk associated with alcohol is not absolute, but dose-dependent. This is a common-sense principle, even before it is scientific, but one that has been challenged in recent years by increasingly simplified and polarized messages.

Today, new evidence helps take it a step further. They do not refute that starting point – they reinforce it – but they place it in a more articulated framework. For while it is true that quantity matters, it is equally true that it is no longer enough to talk only about quantity ..

The study: a debate still open

Underlying this new phase of the comparison is a paper published in 2026 in Nutrients, authored by researchers from the University of Navarre and the Harvard School of Public Health.

The title is already indicative: “The Unfinished Debate on Wine and Other Alcoholic Beverages.”.
And in fact, the central point is precisely this: the debate is not closed.

Not because alcohol is harmless, but because generalizations run the risk of not being supported by sufficient evidence and ignore differences between individuals and contexts.

In other words: the problem is not simplifying, but oversimplifying.

Not all consumption is equal

The new analyses highlight an aspect often overlooked in the public debate: for the same amount of alcohol, health effects can vary significantly because they depend on variables that are often overlooked:

• the type of drink
• consumption patterns
• the food context
• the overall lifestyle

This is where the discourse changes profoundly. Because it means moving away from the simplistic logic of “alcohol is all the same” and recognizing that there are different consumption patterns, with different outcomes.

Wine within the Mediterranean diet

Within this framework, moderate consumption of wine with meals-included in the Mediterranean diet-emerges as a specific pattern that cannot be superimposed on others.

This is not to attribute miraculous virtues to wine, but to observe one fact: when wine is part of a balanced food system, accompanied by a good quality diet, physical activity and social relationships, the epidemiological associations are different than in other contexts.

This point is critical because it shifts the focus:
not wine in isolation, but wine in its cultural and food context.

A cultural issue before a scientific one

Wine, in the Mediterranean tradition, is not a substance to be consumed in isolation, but an element of the table, of food, of conviviality. To separate it from this context is to alter not only its meaning, but probably its effects as well.

Putting the Mediterranean model back at the center is not a nostalgic operation. It is, rather, a way to read scientific data more consistently with the reality of behavior.

A question of method (even before merit)

The real message of the study is not “wine is good for you” or “bad for you.” It is a different one: we do not yet have sufficient tools to answer definitively and validly for everyone.

Conclusive studies are lacking, evidence is heterogeneous, and individual differences matter far more than they have been willing to admit.

This is why the authors speak of a personalized approach and “precision medicine.”.

Conclusion: from quantity to complexity

The dose remains critical. But it is no longer enough.

Those who continue to reduce the issue of wine and health to a purely quantitative matter are now in danger of being, paradoxically, as simplistic as those who advocate opposing positions.

Research is going in another direction: more complex, more nuanced, but also more useful.