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PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Red wine fans have long toasted to their drink of choice, believing it offered special health perks over other boozy options. Many of us have heard that red wine—packed with antioxidants—might actually protect against cancer. But a new buzz-killing study says otherwise: your merlot is no healthier than your moscato.

Scientists from Brown University took a hard look at whether red wine really deserves its health halo. They dug through decades of research specifically comparing red and white wine’s relationship to cancer risk—something no one had thoroughly investigated before. Their verdict? The red wine health advantage is mostly wishful drinking.

“We found no differences in the association between red or white wine consumption and overall cancer risk, challenging the common belief that red wine is healthier than white wine,” the researchers wrote, effectively popping the cork on the myth that red wine somehow fights cancer better than white. This finding could shake up both how doctors advise patients and how consumers justify their wine choices in an industry worth over $400 billion globally.

How red wine got its health halo

Red wine’s reputation as the “healthy” booze option goes back to what scientists called the “French Paradox”—the head-scratcher that French people ate butter-loaded diets but had surprisingly low heart disease rates. Researchers pointed to France’s love affair with red wine as a possible explanation, singling out a compound called resveratrol.

Resveratrol comes from grape skins, which is why red wine (fermented with skins) contains more of it than white wine (fermented without). Lab studies got everyone excited when they showed resveratrol could slow down or kill various cancer cells—breast, skin, prostate, you name it. These test tube successes helped build red wine’s image as a potential cancer fighter.

But here’s the thing: what happens in a lab dish often doesn’t translate to what happens in actual human bodies. The real-world connection between wine and cancer has been fuzzy—until this study cleared things up.

What they actually found

Led by Eunyoung Cho, the research team scoured medical databases PubMed and EMBASE, hunting for studies on wine and cancer through December 2023. They pulled together data from 42 studies—20 that followed people over time and 22 that compared cancer patients with non-cancer controls. This massive review included nearly 3 million people and over 95,000 cancer cases.

Unlike previous research that lumped all wine together, these scientists specifically separated red wine from white wine data. This let them directly compare how each type related to cancer risk. Their analysis covered all the major cancer villains: skin, breast, prostate, ovarian, lung, and colorectal.

The bottom line? People who drank the most red wine had a cancer risk factor of 0.98 compared to those who drank the least. White wine drinkers scored 1.00. The difference between these numbers (0.74 on their statistical test) is basically zilch.

Translation: Whether you’re team cabernet or team chardonnay makes zero difference to your overall cancer risk. Neither offers any special protection.

Some red flags for women

While the big-picture findings showed no difference between red and white wine, some interesting patterns emerged when the researchers dug deeper. When they looked at women specifically, white wine drinking was linked to a statistically significant 26% higher cancer risk, while red wine showed a trend toward lower risk (9% lower) that wasn’t statistically significant on its own. The difference between how red and white wine related to cancer risk in women was statistically significant.

Looking only at the highest-quality studies (ones that followed people over time rather than looking backward), white wine consumption was associated with a statistically significant 12% higher cancer risk. In contrast, red wine showed no statistically significant association.

Here’s another eye-opening finding of the study, which is published in the journal Nutrients: white wine seems particularly bad news for skin cancer. Across six studies focusing on skin cancer, white wine drinkers had a 22% higher risk, while red wine showed essentially no effect. This difference was so strong statistically that it’s almost certainly not a fluke.

“For individual cancer sites, there was a significant difference between red and white wine intake only in skin cancer risk,” the researchers wrote. If you’re already at high risk for skin cancer, this might be worth noting.

The resveratrol reality check

This raises an obvious question: If resveratrol in red wine kills cancer cells in the lab, why don’t red wine drinkers get less cancer?

The answer likely boils down to dosage and biology. Your body breaks down resveratrol incredibly quickly, and very little of what you drink actually makes it into your bloodstream. The tiny amount of resveratrol in your glass of merlot just isn’t enough to do what it does in those lab studies. Even if you drink two glasses of red wine daily, you’re only getting about 27 micrograms of resveratrol per kilogram of body weight, and most of that never becomes active in your system.

Bottom line: You’d need to drink dangerous, liver-destroying amounts of red wine to get enough resveratrol to make any difference. At that point, the alcohol would be killing you faster than any potential cancer-fighting benefit could help.

Ethanol: The great equalizer

Both red and white wines contain ethanol, which has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). This classification places alcohol in the same category as tobacco smoke and asbestos, indicating sufficient evidence for its carcinogenicity in humans.

When metabolized, ethanol produces acetaldehyde, a compound that readily forms harmful adducts with DNA and cellular proteins. These adducts can result in point mutations and DNA-protein crosslinks that may lead to cancer development.

“According to the IARC Global Cancer Observatory database, 741,300 cancer cases in 2020—about 4.1% of all global cancer cases that year—were attributed to alcohol consumption,” the researchers noted in their paper. This substantial cancer burden underscores alcohol’s significant role as a public health concern, regardless of the type consumed.

What this means for wine drinkers

The gap between public perception and scientific evidence regarding wine and health is notable. A recent Canadian survey found that 41% of respondents felt uncertain about whether red wine reduced cancer risk, even while 54% acknowledged that alcohol consumption increased cancer risk.

This cognitive dissonance—simultaneously recognizing alcohol as harmful while hoping certain types might be protective—highlights the power of marketing and cultural messaging around wine consumption. The wine industry has not been shy about promoting potential health benefits, especially those associated with red wine.

The new study’s findings serve as an important reality check, suggesting that consumers should make decisions about wine consumption based on accurate information rather than wishful thinking about cancer prevention.

Like all research, this meta-analysis has limitations. Wine consumption was self-reported in the included studies, introducing potential for recall bias. Additionally, the analysis couldn’t control for all possible confounding factors, though most included studies adjusted for important variables like smoking status, body mass index, and demographic factors.

The study’s strengths, however, are substantial. With 42 studies including nearly 3 million participants, it represents the largest and most comprehensive analysis to date specifically comparing red and white wine in relation to cancer risk. The inclusion of both cohort and case-control studies, with subgroup analyses by study type, also enhances the robustness of the findings.

The researchers are clear about their study’s implications: “Our findings provided a critical public health message that drinking red wine may not be any better than drinking white wine in terms of cancer risk.”

This doesn’t mean wine enthusiasts need to immediately abandon their preferred beverage. Rather, the findings suggest consumers should make informed choices with realistic expectations about health impacts.

From a public health perspective, the study reinforces existing recommendations to limit alcohol consumption for cancer prevention. The American Cancer Society and other health organizations recommend limiting alcohol to no more than one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men—if consumed at all.

Pour conclusions

Wine has been part of human culture for thousands of years. We love it for the taste, the social ritual, and yes—many of us have bought into the idea that red wine might even be good for us.

But here’s the reality check: The fairy tale that a daily glass of red wine fights cancer just doesn’t hold up under scientific scrutiny.

If you enjoy wine, you should definitely think twice about that “it’s healthy!” justification for your nightly glass. Whether you’re team red or team white, keeping consumption modest is what matters.