Wine appears to play an important role in the Mediterranean Diet, consistently ranked as the world’s healthiest.
Yet the World Health Organisation has declared there is no safe level of alcohol.
This difference in opinion has prompted Spanish researchers to ask if it would be better or worse to remove wine from the Mediterranean Diet.
It’s a project that could also determine, once and for all, if there are any health benefits to drinking wine in moderation — or if it’s all an illusion.
A new dietary trial
In late December 2023, Professor Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez and his team launched UNATI (University of Navarra Alumni Trialist Initiative). It’s a randomised control trial, a type of study known as the gold standard in science.
Prof Martinez-Gonzalez — Professor of Public Health at the University of Navarra and Adjunct Professor of Nutrition at Harvard University — outlined the project in front of an audience of scientists and doctors at the Lifestyle, Diet, Wine & Health Congress, held in Rome in late March 2025.
UNATI, partly funded by the European Research Council, will be the most significant randomised control trial done on alcohol; a previous attempt in the US collapsed amid accusations of impropriety.
The conclusions will be released later this decade.
What earlier studies said
A previous study, PREDIMED, coordinated by Prof Martinez-Gonzalez, looked at the impact of the Mediterranean Diet on cardiovascular disease.
Dietary studies are difficult. Researchers have to track people to make sure they stick to the diet, and then there are ‘confounding variables’ to deal with, like participants who turn out to have underlying diseases. As Prof Martinez-Gonzalez said, “you need many years of following up thousands of participants”.
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