Wine Could Be as Bad For You as Cigarettes

You can forget everything you’ve read about the health benefits of wine — apparently it’s bad for you again.

A recent study found that drinking one bottle of wine per week could be as harmful as smoking 10 cigarettes for women and five for men, the New York Post reported.

Published last week in the journal BMC Public Health, the study found that drinking wine increases “lifetime cancer risk” by 1 percent in men and 1.4 percent in women.

“Our estimation of a cigarette equivalent for alcohol provides a useful measure for communicating possible cancer risks that exploits successful historical messaging on smoking,” said Theresa Hydes, the report’s lead author. “We hope that by using cigarettes as the comparator we could communicate this message more effectively to help individuals make more informed lifestyle choices.”

However, as the Post noted, the statistical comparison may not be as telling as it appears, as the study ignored other critical health risks linked to smoking, including heart and respiratory disease.

“The study didn’t take into account the effects of alcohol and cigarette smoking on cardiovascular health and other organs,” Francisco Esteva, the head of breast medical oncology at New York University’s Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center told HuffPost.

While Esteva conceded that the research presented “an interesting statistical analysis,” he ultimately called the study’s conclusion “quite simplistic,” and cautioned that it “may send the wrong message.”