Objective To investigate whether people who buy wine buy healthier food items than those who buy beer. Design Cross sectional study. Setting Supermarkets in Denmark. Data Information on number, type of item, and total charge from 3.5 million transactions over a period of six months. Results Wine buyers bought more olives, fruit and vegetables, poultry, cooking oil, and low fat cheese, milk, and meat than beer buyers. Beer buyers bought more ready cooked dishes, sugar, cold cuts, chips, pork, butter or margarine, sausages, lamb, and soft drinks than wine buyers. Conclusions Wine buyers made more purchases of healthy food items than people who buy beer.

Neither ethanol nor red wine polyphenols reduced mature atherosclerosis or changed the content of collagen in plaques in apolipoprotein E-deficient mice.

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Purpose This paper aims to evaluate the use of Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses for judging the effects of alcohol consumption on the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). Design/methodology/approach This paper presents a review of methodology for MR and describes its early application to judging health effects of alcohol, current uses and a recommended approach of combining MR results with those from observational and experimental studies. Findings Early applications of MR to health effects of alcohol consumption were inadequate for providing unbiased results, but newer attempts using polygenic scores show promise. It is important to combine data from MR analyses with those from observational and experimental studies to obtain an unbiased and scientifically sound estimate of alcohol’s effects on health. Practical implications Giving advice to the public regarding alcohol consumption must be based on accurate, unbiased scientific data; this paper describes attempts to use MR for achieving this goal. Social implications Given that light-to-moderate alcohol intake is associated with a lower risk of CHD, type II diabetes mellitus and total mortality, it is important to be able to evaluate both the benefits and harms from alcohol before giving advice regarding drinking. Originality/value This is part of a group of three papers dealing with the potential health benefits and harms associated with alcohol consumption.