White Wine Is Just as Good for You as Red

We're always hearing about the health benefits of red wine. It will help you burn fat. It's good for your heart, your brain. It might even actually help your liver cells. Ok, we get it: Drink red wine.

Meanwhile, we rarely hear of research singing the praises of red's sulphite-heavy, more emotional cousin white wine. But as science advances, so too may the reputation of white wine. At least that's what some leading medical research seems to be pointing toward.

As The Washington Post reports, evidence from two recent studies suggests that white wine could have health benefits on par with red.

The first, pretentiously titled In Vino Veritas (In Wine, Truth), was presented to the European Society of Cardiology and found no discernible difference between the health benefits of pinot noir and chardonnay grapes in terms of cholesterol regulation. After tracking 146 subjects for a year, all of whom worked out twice a week, it turned out that consumption of both of those wines led to "significant improvement in cholesterol levels." In other words, the white wine was just as healthy as the red in this case.

The other, titled Moderate Wine Intake in Adults With Type 2 Diabetes, was published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine and found similar results, this time with Type 2 diabetes patients. Participants in this study were randomly assigned to drink five ounces of red wine, white wine, or mineral water with dinner and the 224 volunteers were also all instructed to adhere to a Mediterranean diet with no calorie restrictions.

After two years of follow-up, they found no significant difference between red and white wine's effects on glucose regulation in diabetic patients—both helped regulate glucose levels. "This long-term trial showed that a healthy diet and moderate alcohol intake, particularly red wine, were associated with better lipid and glucose control than water and had no significant harmful effects," the study reveals.

That's right, a moderate amount of white wine is actually better than pure, clean water for glucose control in diabetes patients. That being said, red wine was still the only one of the three liquids that were measured (red wine, white wine, water) which was found to have a measurable impact on cardiac health on the cardiac health of those suffering from Type 2 diabetes. So, once again, red proves that it is the healthiest of the grape elixirs.

But the researchers also added an important caveat: Anything more than one or two daily servings of wine would actually be risky for patients suffering from the pancreatic condition, meaning that it's hardly time to replace insulin prescriptions with Bordeaux and Burgundy.

White wine has many of the same protective plant flavonoids as red wine and there is also evidence that it could have even more antioxidants than red wine, yet it's rarely in mentioned in the same breath as red in the research or dinner party conversation surrounding the health benefits of wine.

Luckily, there are medical researchers out there studying white wine before its good name is irrevocably and unjustly tarnished by those who think of it only as a painfully temporary cure for breakups and the root cause of nasty hangovers among single ladies and depressed housewives. It can also be way more than that.