• Posted March 13, 2025

Red Wine Protects Against Cancer? Maybe Not

Red wine has been thought to potentially offer protection against cancer, given its high levels of the anti-inflammatory antioxidant resveratrol.

But there’s no clear evidence that red wine lessens cancer risk, a new evidence review has concluded.

In fact, neither red nor white wine appears to increase people’s overall cancer risk, researchers recently reported in the journal Nutrients.

“We conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis to assess whether red wine is truly a healthier choice than white wine,” co-lead researcher Eunyoung Cho, an associate professor of epidemiology and dermatology at Brown University, said in a news release.

“The results revealed no significant difference in cancer risk between red and white wine overall,” Cho said.

For the evidence review, researchers pooled data from 42 studies involving nearly 96,000 participants to assess the cancer risks or benefits posed by red or white wine.

The resveratrol in red wine might not help against cancer because the body burns through it quickly, researchers said.

“Although concentrations of resveratrol are greater in red compared to white wine, studies have demonstrated that resveratrol is metabolized quickly, with nearly 75% excreted via feces and urine,” researchers wrote.

While their study found no overall link between wine and cancer, researchers did detect specific risk increases.

For example, white wine consumption was linked to a 22% increased risk of skin cancer compared to red wine, researchers said.

White wine might be linked to behaviors that increase risk for skin cancer, like indoor tanning or putting on too little sunscreen by the pool, researchers speculated.

They also detected a stronger association between white wine intake and increased overall cancer risk among women.

However, overall “our findings provided a critical public health message that drinking red wine may not be any better than drinking white wine in terms of cancer risk,” researchers concluded.

Alcohol -- specifically, the ethanol in alcoholic beverages -- is broken down by the body into compounds that damage DNA and proteins, contributing to cancer risk, researchers noted. 

In 2020, heavy drinking was linked to more than 740,000 cancer cases worldwide, accounting for 4% of all cases, researchers said.

More information

Harvard Medical School has more about wine, beer and health risks.

SOURCES: Brown University, news release, March 10, 2025; Nutrients, Jan. 31, 2025