Dr. Christopher Labos

And after that story aired on 60 Minutes, red wine sales in the US at least shot up.

And that idea has stayed with us ever since.

The reality is once you start to actually pick apart what the red wine with the French paradox is about, you start to see some flaws into it.

First of all, if you were to actually watch the 60 minute story now, a lot of the things they say in it are very, very dated.

But this idea of red wine has really, really stuck around.

And it's largely it's explainable using a concept called reverse causation and or the sick quitter effect.

And it basically goes something like this.

Very few people in society, North American society, drink zero alcohol.

Most people drink some.

There are people who drink zero for religious reasons and cultural reasons, obviously.

But if you were to go and look at all the people who drink no alcohol, you would find something very, very interesting.

There is a big difference between people who never drank and people who used to drink and then quit.

And so there's a difference between never drinkers and former drinkers.

And the people who are former drinkers usually quit for a reason, usually because

they got sick they developed liver problems they developed a heart condition they had high blood pressure and the general recommendation is you know alcohol increases your blood pressure so if you have high blood pressure cut back on the alcohol you will consume less sugar you will lose weight your blood pressure will go down a lot of good stuff will start to happen to you

So a lot of the people who in these studies were being captured as people who consumed zero alcohol were not never drinkers.

They were former drinkers who quit because they already had heart disease.

And it made those people look as if they were at higher risk.

And that's what created this U-shaped association.

So there are.