Local Tastes: Wine is not healthy. Period. | News

And when the body metabolizes ethanol in alcoholic drinks, the most common pathway involves two enzymes — alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase.

These enzymes help break down the alcohol molecule so it can be eliminated from the body. The first step metabolizes alcohol to acetaldehyde, a toxic substance known to be a carcinogen. In the second step acetaldehyde is further broken down into a less active byproduct called acetate, which is subsequently metabolized into water and carbon dioxide.

Unfounded health claims are nothing new for selling a product and getting the public to buy-in.

In 1863 a Parisian chemist, Angelo Mariani, mixed wine with cocaine, called it “Vin Marian,” and promoted the addictive and intoxicating concoction as an elixir for “good health.”

Not surprisingly, it was hugely popular and even used by Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne, who repeated the false health claims.

Building on Mariani’s success, an American, Dr. John Pemberton of Atlanta, created his own version that he initially called Pemberton’s French Wine Coca. This, too, was touted as a health tonic, curing everything from headaches to melancholy.

Because of the growing anti-alcohol movement in the United States at the time, in 1886 the wine was replaced by extra amounts of sugar, and Pemberton changed the name of his drink to “Coca-Cola, the temperance drink.”