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Photo: Instagram / @fitvine_wine
The Health Benefits of Drinking Wine
The California-based wine company now sells 13 different blends or varietals of sparkling wine, rosé, whites and reds, all emblazoned with a runner holding a glass and bunch of grapes on the label.
As a result of their slick marketing, wellness promises and reasonable price point (about $15), FitVine is the fastest-growing wine brand in the U.S.,according to aFoodDivereport.
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“We focus on crafting clean, great-tasting wines with significantly less sugar, fewer sulfites and no flavor additives, without lowering alcohol,” theFitVine websitepromises.
Are FitVine Wines Healthy?
Here’s a rundown of the stats for current offerings, per 5-ounce glass:
For comparison, we’ve rounded up a rough estimate of thecalories per serving of traditional winesand other alcohols.
So what makes FitVine’s nutrition info look a bit different? The longer grapes stay on the vine as they grow, the more natural sugar they produce. Fermentation can also impact the amount of sweetness (noted as “residual sugars”) left in a bottle of wine. FitVine grapes are plucked earlier than most and fermented longer to allow the yeast that the grapes age with to “eat” more of the sugars, resulting in a drier, lower-sugar wine. A typical glass of red wine has about 0.9 grams of sugar, while a glass of white wine has about 1.4 grams, per theUnited States Department of Agriculture’s FoodData Nutrition Database.
In terms of calories, FitVine wines only have about 30 fewer per glass than their competitors—yes, even with the reduced sugar they still have more than 100 calories per glass. That’s because they still contain the same amount of alcohol, which has 7 calories per gram, compared to 4 calories per gram in carbs and protein and 9 calories per gram in fat.
FitVine wines also have one-half to one-fifth the sulfites compared to traditional wines. Some people swear that the sulfites are the part of the wine that gives them next-day headaches as the result of increased histamine production, but there islittle to no current scienceto back that up. (Psst … it’s probably the alcohol that causes that.)
The Bottom Line
Alcohol is alcohol, regardless of the label claims, and should be consumed in moderation. (BTW, “moderation” means up to one glass per day for women or up to two glasses per day for men, per theDietary Guidelines for Americans.) And sticking with a moderate amount can offer some very realhealth benefits!
If you like the flavor of FitVine, great! Feel free to stock up. But just because your glass has 30 fewer calories—which is equivalent to eating about three fewer french fries—doesn’t mean that you have the green light to gulp the whole bottle. And it’s probably best to ignore any health claims on the label of any kind of booze. The ABV has more of an impact than the sugar content on your headache riskandthe calorie count per glass, and this info is required to be listed on anything that contains alcohol.
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