

It does appear that wine in particular might have a stronger protective effect against this disease than other beverages. A study from 2017 had similar findings, reporting that frequent, moderate drinking was linked with a lower chance of developing type 2 diabetes.

Most recently, a paper from a study on wine and type 2 diabetes suggested that those with the disease might experience benefits if they switch from abstention to moderate drinking. We've reported on many scientific studies that look at the relationship between alcohol and diabetes and other blood sugar–related health concerns.
#Josh red wine free
Want to learn more about how wine can be part of a healthy lifestyle? Sign up for Wine Spectator 's free Wine & Healthy Living e-mail newsletter and get the latest health news, feel-good recipes, wellness tips and more delivered straight to your inbox every other week! The American Heart Association recommends limiting daily added sugar intake to about 25 grams (or 6 teaspoons) of sugar for women, and about 36 grams (or 9 teaspoons) for men. It is especially important to be mindful of your total sugar intake if you also consume a lot of soda, desserts or processed foods.įurthermore, a handful of producers do add sugar or grape concentrate to sweeten a (usually lower-quality) wine-these are the added sugars that you need to watch out for. But that does not mean you can go bananas with the sweet stuff! Although there is no universal limit on how much natural sugar you should consume, the federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends that carbohydrates (including sugar, as well as starch and fiber) make up only 45 to 65 percent of your total daily calories. The good news is that wine, a product of fruit, almost always contains only natural sugars, which health experts do not put a limit on. "For natural sugars that would appear in fruit, vegetables, grains and dairy, we don’t have a restriction." "When we use the term 'sugar' from a metabolic or nutritional standpoint, we mean sugar that may be added into products, and we also mean naturally occurring sugar that can occur, say, in fruit, milk and even some vegetables," Kelley Bradshaw, a registered dietitian and the outpatient clinical manager of the Nutrition and Wellness Service at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told Wine Spectator. So what do sugar levels mean for your recommended dietary intake? Experts say it depends if the sugars are naturally occurring or added.

The USDA also offers some guidance: According to its website, an average dry table wine has 1 to 2 grams of sugar in a standard 5-ounce serving, and sweet wines, such as Sauternes, Port and ice wine, which are usually served in smaller amounts, contain around 8 grams of sugar per 3.5-ounce pour (though this can vary). Wines that fall in the middle of these limits are called "off-dry."įor Champagne and other sparkling wines, keywords to look out for are, in order from driest to sweetest: extra brut, brut, extra dry or extra sec, sec, demi-sec and doux. You can also pick up some clues without opening the bottle: Generally, if a wine is described as "dry," that means there are less than 10 grams per liter of residual sugar a "sweet" or dessert wine has more than 30 grams per liter. (Just don’t confuse fruitiness for sweetness.) Though there aren't any hard-and-fast rules determining exactly how many sugars a specific type of wine will contain, and only a few wineries opt to feature nutritional information on their labels, there are still ways to get a good sense of how much sugar is in your glass of wine-the obvious one, of course, being how sweet the wine tastes. This is the primary source of a wine's sugar content. Any sugar that remains after the fermentation process is called residual sugar. Ripe grapes naturally contain sugars, and in the process of turning grape juice into wine, most of the sugars are converted into alcohol via fermentation. We asked leading experts for the facts on sugar, wine and potential health concerns. Is wine’s sugar content something that drinkers should worry about? But sugar has also become a bit of an obsession, with myriad opinions on how harmful it is and what kinds of sugars do the most harm. Sugar has been linked with health problems including diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and tooth decay, to name a few.

Dietary "no-nos" come and go, but one of the most prominently and consistently warned-against nutritional hazards of the past few decades is excessive sugar consumption.
