Preservative Free Wine – Why I’m in a Pickle

‘Pickled As’ about preservative free wine

I got myself in a bit of a pickle recently.  I was visiting my local organic produce store, enjoying the wholesome feeling of shopping amongst the healthiest products on the planet.  Then I was a bit surprised to come across a bottle of wine, labelled “Preservative Free Wine”.

At first I thought it was a bit of a joke.  You know, up there with Ol Dunny Red, or Wees White Wine.  Haha.  Oh you are serious.

So I walked on past, but my mind couldn’t let it go.  Preservative Free wine?  There was something badly wrong here – on the planet I come from, alcohol is a preservative!  You know all those jars of scientific specimens on a shelf in a laboratory?  They are preserved in alcohol.  Pickled.  Preserved.  Cured.  Canned.  Dead.

So how can a brand of wine be promoted as “Preservative Free Wine” when it actually contains alcohol?  Is it really fair to sell something to the consumer that is not a fair representation of what is inside?  When it comes to marketing and promotion of alcohol, it seems it is okay to do so.

What about organic wine?

Here is another example of the marketing and promotion of alcohol to an appealing audience.  The commitment to eating and drinking organic products is to avoid consuming harmful chemicals, right?  So if you buy a bottle of organic wine – then it must be safe to drink?  Hang on a minute, the fact that the wine contains a harmful chemical as it primary constituent seems to have been overlooked!  Am I being overly suspicious, or is there something going on here?

Now I am really in a pickle

I decided to do some more research into the subject of whether wine is safe to drink.  After all, grapes are fruit and fruit is healthy!  No matter what happens, at least wine must be vegetarian, right?  Not necessarily, it seems.  I stumbled across a Vegan forum, discussing the benefits of drinking wine.  Benefits – whoa there!  Most of the opinion on the forum was that wine is perfectly acceptable for vegans to drink.  Except for one thing.  Part of the process to create the perfect wine, is to add clarifier to the wine before bottling.  Most clarifier comes from an egg based material, and unless you can prove otherwise, wine should not be considered vegan.  Whoops.

But wine is good for us – isn’t it?

Most people think that not only is wine okay to drink, but it somehow is beneficial to our health.  Now to believe this, you obviously have to overlook the fact that alcohol is toxic, addictive and poisonous.  But plenty of people do.

“vegan, organic and preservative free wine – get yours today”

Alcohol has no health benefit

In actual fact, there are no health benefits from drinking wine, or any other form of alcoholic beverage.  And the reason that so many people are not aware of this fact is due to the marketing and promotion of alcohol.  Over many years of social and cultural conditioning, most people have become to accept alcohol as safe to drink.  Whoops again.

Beware the warnings about alcohol

Previously, it was thought that only high level drinkers were at risk from alcohol.  Dare I say “pickled”?  Now the medical profession has become aware that even low level drinking comes with risk.  Even small amounts of alcohol are metabolised into nasty chemicals in the body.  For example, when we drink alcohol, the liver immediately goes to work to remove the toxin.  The way it does this is to break down the alcohol into acetaldehyde.  Unfortunately, acetaldehyde has been listed as a grade 1 carcinogen by the NIAA. See more here:  National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Recover  This is the primary reason that the recommended daily limit on alcohol has been reduced so drastically in recent times.  Alcohol is not good for your health.  Do you understand the pickle I am in?

What can we do to avoid getting in a pickle?

Is all of this a little confusing to anyone? Well it used to be confusing to me. Back when I used to drink alcohol – pickled as! I used to find a lot of confusion around the marketing and promotion of the supposed benefits of drinking alcohol. I used to have a lot of turmoil trying to understand why the recommended drinking limits had become so restrictive. It seemed that I was breaking the recommended alcohol limit nearly every day. But I was trying to cut back, but it wasn’t easy, and I was in a pickle!

Find out the truth about alcohol

I spent some time trying to find out the truth about alcohol, and it is a little disturbing. Especially when I discovered that many of the things that I fundamentally believed about alcohol were wrong. This is what helped me to decide to avoid the problem completely, so I stopped drinking. If you would like to discover the truth about alcohol, then I have put the facts together in one easy read.

Click here to find out the truth about alcohol.

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