14 DAY TRIAL // Countless studies have concluded that alcohol is not healthy and that is the leading cause for numerous conditions. However, it seems there's a clear difference between alcohol types and impact on health and this is directly linked to the buyers' food habits.
Previous studies have shown that drinking wine is associated with lower mortality than drinking beer or spirits.
A statistic carried out by a team of Danish researchers and published in the British Journal of Medicine shows that people who buy wine also buy healthier food and therefore have healthier diets than people who buy beer.
They analyzed 3.5 million transactions chosen at random from 98 outlets of two large Danish supermarket chains over a six month period (September 2002 to February 2003).
Customers were categorized as "wine only," "beer only," "mixed," or "non-alcohol" buyers. Details of items bought, the number and price of the items, and the total charge for each customer's transaction were recorded.
It was discovered that wine buyers bought more olives, fruit and vegetables, poultry, cooking oil, and low fat cheese, milk, and meat than beer buyers. Beer buyers bought more ready cooked dishes, sugar, cold cuts, chips, pork, butter or margarine, sausages, lamb, and soft drinks than wine buyers.
These results indicate that people who buy (and presumably drink) wine purchase a greater number of healthy food items than those who buy beer, the authors say.
They also support findings from the United States, Denmark and France showing that wine drinkers tend to eat fruit, vegetables, and fish and use cooking oil more often and saturated fat less often than those who prefer other alcoholic drinks.