The power of using false health claims to sell everything from cocaine mixed with wine to
cigarettes and cereal is nothing new. And for the last few decades the temptation to link the
consumption of wine with positive health outcomes has been too tempting for many in the
industry to resist. The idea was to convince the public that drinking a glass or two of wine a day
was not only pleasurable but was also a kind of magic health elixir that might reduce the risk of
everything from cancer to heart disease, as well as improve cognition.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” Hippocrates said some 2,500 years ago,
and marketers have been taking his advice ever since. In 1897, C.W. Post called Grape-Nuts
“food for brain and nerve centers.” By the early 1900s Kellogg claimed that eating cornflakes in
the morning reduced immoral sexual urges. In the 1920s and ’30s cigarettes were marketed as
“doctor-recommended” and handed out as free samples by medical professionals. Today nearly
all foods and beverages make some sort of health claim, and nearly all of them are false.
Torches of Freedom
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries tobacco companies made a number of health claims to
promote their products. These included helping with digestion, weight loss, sore throats and
asthma, preventing or even curing tuberculosis, improving mental performance and relaxing the
nervous system. Smoking was also heralded as a way to gain equal rights for women.
In the early 20th century Edward Bernays, a public relations specialist, launched his “Torches of
Freedom” campaign with the goal of breaking down the social taboo against women smoking in
public. At that time smoking was seen as a male activity, and women who smoked in public were
often viewed as immoral or promiscuous. Linking smoking to women's liberation, Bernays
tapped into the growing feminist movement and created a new market for tobacco companies. In
1929 he hired a group of young women to march in the New York City Easter parade while
smoking cigarettes and carrying banners that read "torches of freedom.” It worked. Whereas only about 5% of women in the United States smoked in 1929, by the mid-1960s that had grown to more than 40%.
Vin Marian
For thousands of years the indigenous people of the Andean region of South America—where
the coca plant is native—had chewed the plants’ leaves or brewed them into tea to provide
energy, combat altitude sickness and relieve hunger and fatigue. In 1855 a German chemist
named Friedrich Gaedcke first extracted the active ingredient from the coca plant and called it
cocaine.
By 1863 Angelo Mariani—an Italian-French chemist and businessman—had developed a new
beverage that mixed the powerful new stimulant with wine. He called it “Vin Marian,” and the
tonic became an overnight success. Widely promoted for its supposed health benefits—including
its ability to boost energy, improve digestion and relieve nearly all known ailments—the powerful elixir was eagerly adopted by notable figures such as Pope Leo XIII, Thomas Edison,
Queen Victoria, Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne.
Noticing the success, an American, Dr. John Pemberton of Atlanta, created his own version of
Vin Marian, which he called Pemberton's French Wine Coca. Like Mariani before him,
Pemberton touted his new drink as a magic cure for everything from headaches and neuralgia to
melancholy and hysteria. However, by the late 1880s—driven by a growing anti-alcohol
movement spreading across the country—the wine was removed as an ingredient and replaced
instead with a heaping amount of sugar. Pemberton also changed the name to “Coca-Cola: The
temperance drink.”
By the early part of the 20th century it was becoming clear that cocaine was not the magic cure
that its proponents had claimed, and by 1914 the United States had passed the Harrison Narcotics
Tax Act, which required individuals and companies dealing in cocaine and opiates to register
with the government and pay a tax on their sales and distribution. Reading the writing on the
wall, Pemberton replaced the cocaine in his drink with caffeine; however, the health claims
continued for decades.
The problem with health claims
As a scientist turned vintner turned columnist, I am skeptical of anyone telling me that something
is “healthy.” The problem with such claims is that it is impossible to be 100% certain of any such
statement, and an error could result in harm. Therefore, the wine industry must drop all health
claims and embrace the reality that wine (and every other type of alcohol) is an adult beverage
that is an addictive intoxicant. It has brought pleasure to millions but ruin to others.
