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is myth that the French are healthier than most everyone else because they drink. In

truth, the French are drowning in the grape and paying a hefty price for it.

"There is no scientific consensus today over the protective effect of alcohol," says

Dominique Gillot, France's secretary of state for health. "The link between the

quantity of alcohol consumed and increase of risk of diseases, particularly cancer,

is, on the other hand, scientifically validated."

The fact is that according to data from the world's largest study of heart disease,

conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) during the past decade in 21

countries with 10 million men and women, French heart disease statistics appear to

have been underestimated and the "French Paradox" overestimated. France's rate of

heart disease is actually similar to that of neighboring Italy, Spain, and southern

Germany - lower than many countries in the world, but hardly as remarkable as

reported in the 80s and early 90s.

The French drink one-and-a-half times more per capita than Americans and their death

rate from liver cirrhosis is more than one-and-a-half times greater than that in the

United States. According to WHO, France has the sixth highest adult per capita

alcohol consumption in the world. (The U.S. ranks 32nd.) Alcohol may be involved in

nearly half of the deaths from road accidents, half of all homicides, and one-quarter

of suicides, according to the French equivalent of the U.S. Institutes of Health.

And while coronary heart disease may be less pervasive in that country of 60 million

people than in many others, it is still the number one cause of death.

Within the past year, several other revelations have highlighted this

little-publicized, other side of French drinking:

According to the first French economic study of its kind, France is more like

the U.S. than Americans might realize in that alcohol also ranks first - above

tobacco - in its cost to society. Tobacco takes more of a toll than alcohol in

the rest of Europe, Canada and Australia.

The high premature death rate of French men is largely due to alcohol abuse. It

is nearly double the premature death rate of French women, and the magnitude of

the difference is the highest in Europe, according to the French government's

most recent report on health.

French youth, who can legally drink at age 16, prefer beer and distilled spirits

to wine and have increased their consumption five-fold since 1996 in part

because 12- to 14-year-olds are drinking and binge drinking. This has led to a

new government "War Against Drugs" that includes alcohol.

[...]

The French Paradox. Even in English the expression sounded romantic to 33.7 million

Americans who first heard it in a report by Morley Safer on "60 Minutes" in November

1991. Although the French eat fatty foods and smoke more than Americans, said Safer,

"if you're a middle-aged American man, your chances of dying of a heart attack are

three times greater than a Frenchman of the same age. Obviously, they're doing

something right - something Americans are not doing... Now it's all but confirmed:

Alcohol - in particular red wine - reduces the risk of heart disease."

Within four weeks, U.S. sales of red wine rocketed by 44 percent. American Airlines

reported being unable to stock enough red wine to meet demand. By February 1992, a

Gallup poll showed that 58 percent of Americans were aware of research linking

moderate drinking to lower rates of heart disease. According to the poll, consumers

had returned to drinking levels not seen since the mid-'80s. Although beer remained

the preferred drink of Americans, wine preference increased from 22 to 27 percent.

Five months after the 1992 poll, "60 Minutes" re-broadcast the "French Paradox"

segment. Sales of red wine shot up 49 percent over the previous year. Safer was

honored in France with a special "communication" prize from LVMH Moet Hennessy-Louis

Vuitton.

During the next few years, the Wine Institute lobbied officials of the U.S.

Department of Health to reflect studies confirming the "60 Minutes" side of French

drinking in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which the industry subsequently used to

market wine as a health elixir. Food and Wines from France, which promotes Gallic

products overseas, placed full-page newspaper ads announcing that French consumption

of fatty food was counteracted by drinking French red wine.

"[Health] announcements are increasing consumption more than anything else," said

Stephanie Grubbs, marketing manager for Robert Mondavi Coastal, in Impact magazine in

1997. That same year, three out of four readers in the January Consumer Reports on

Health survey believed that moderate red wine consumption is more beneficial than

drinking beer or liquor.

Recently, the San Francisco-based Wine Institute helped some California wineries get

permission from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to add a label

referring consumers to the federal dietary guidelines to learn the "health effects"

of alcohol. But anyone who actually sent for the document would discover that the

government's advice on alcohol is mostly cautionary.

Inflamed by the belief that the wine industry was using the label to make it appear

that the government was suggesting Americans drink for their health, Senator Strom

Thurmond (R-SC), whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver, recently won a battle

for the BATF to hold hearings on whether the "health effects" label can legally be

affixed to every wine bottle. They're scheduled to take place in a number of U.S.

cities in late spring.

Today the Wine Institute touts its product on its website with studies and press

releases. One quotes David Pittman, Ph.D., researcher at Washington University in

St. Louis: "In societies such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, where wine and

overall alcohol consumption is higher than in the United States, they just don't have

as many alcohol-related problems such as drunk driving and underage drinking."

That would be news to France.

The world view that the French are able to control their drinking habits is untrue,

according to Pierre Kopp, professor of economics at the Sorbonne. Kopp recently

released the first French study estimating the cost of legal (alcohol and tobacco)

and illegal drugs. Kopp estimates that alcohol costs France $18.5 billion (U.S.)

each year. Drinking is responsible for nearly 53 percent of overall social costs of

alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs, he reports. (Annual cost to the state is $14.3

billion for tobacco and $2 billion for illegal drugs.)

But even these high alcohol economic cost figures are underestimated, cautions the

researcher, because he left out alcohol-related crime and accidents, which comprise

some of the largest costs to society in the United States. Kopp focused on public

and private money spent on medical treatment, lost productivity, absenteeism,

uncollected taxes, unpaid health contributions, and preventive measures.

[...]

"Consumption is exceptionally high and the final bill is extremely heavy. Alcohol

accounted for 42,963 deaths in France in 1997."

[...]

When "60 Minutes" introduced the French Paradox to America, Morley Safer featured

only one French scientific authority - Serge Renaud, a trendsetter in alcohol

research who still maintains that "there is no doubt that a moderate intake of wine

(one to three glasses per day for a man) is associated with a 30- to 40-percent

reduction in mortality from all causes." In its first issue of the new millennium,

the prestigious British journal Lancet noted in a short profile of Renaud that his

enthusiasm for alcohol and the French Paradox is hardly unanimous today among his

French peers. In fact, at least two of the scientists instrumental in early French

Paradox research today disagree with Renaud's belief in the central role of alcohol

in a lower coronary heart disease rate.

[...]

What's new for both men is the MONICA Project established by centers around the world

to MONItor trends in Cardiovascular diseases and relate them to risk factor changes

over a 10-year period. Established in the early 1980s by WHO, its final data were

highlighted last September at the European Society of Cardiology in Barcelona. De

Lorgeril reported there that the WHO data were 75 to 90 percent higher than France's

statistics for coronary heart disease deaths.

The cardiologist said he scrutinized alcohol-related deaths and found that French

men, "who drink too much," have the highest rates of liver disease and - by far

more upper gastrointestinal cancer, and were more likely to die in accidents, by

suicide, or as a consequence of crime than men of other nationalities. While men in

Sweden can expect to live 76.5 years on average, a French man's average lifespan,

said de Lorgeril, is 74.1 years.

Dr. Ian Graham, a professor of epidemiology at Trinity College in Dublin, said that

de Lorgeril's statistics suggest that the lower rate of coronary deaths in France are

due "to competing causes of death" - many more French men might die early from

alcohol-related causes before they have the opportunity to die of heart disease.

[...]

In 1998, a pharmacist who is a director at the French counterpart of the U.S.

National Institute of Health handed then French Health Minister Bernard Kouchner a

report that had the effect of "a sort of a bomb." In what has become known as the

Roques Report, Bernard Roques classified drugs on the basis of their danger to the

public rather than their legal status. Based on scientific data, alcohol took first

place along with heroin and cocaine; tobacco took second place with amphetamines and

LSD; and marijuana was in the third, least dangerous group.

[...]

Written by Hilary Abramson; edited by James F. Mosher; copy edited by Pam Glenn

Copyright 2000 Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol Other Drug Problems

The original article from which the above excerpts were taken can be found on the

Marin Institute web site at www.marininstitute.org/NL2000.html.

Drink Like the French,

Die Like the French

by David Jernigan

The truth is finally starting to come out: If Americans drink alcohol like the

French, we will die like the French.

[...]

Nearly 43,000 French people die each year from alcohol-related causes, roughly the

equivalent of 200,000 American - double the number who currently die annually of

alcohol-related causes in the United States.

According to the World Health Organization's Global Status Report on Alcohol, the

French drink 54 percent more alcohol than Americans, and die of liver cirrhosis 57

percent more often.

Yes, fewer French people die of heart disease than would be expected given their

fatty diets. However, French men in particular die prematurely in disproportionate

numbers, and alcohol-related problems are often the cause.

In 1991, Morley Safer's "60 Minutes" report on the possible heart protective effects

of drinking red wine led to a 44 percent increase in red wine sales among Americans.

Assiduous lobbying by wine makers prompted the Department of Agriculture (USDA) for

the first time to make positive mention of alcohol consumption in its Dietary