Icarus died pursuing the Sun off the island of Ikaria, so legend has it. The residents of this Greek island in the eastern Aegean take no such risks.
Their lives are sedate, filled with Sun (at a safe distance), sand, good food and company. Meals tend to be typical Mediterranean fare – pulses, wholegrains, some fish, a little meat – and are enjoyed with friends.
This lifestyle, according to some researchers, produces the longest-lived among us.
Ikaria is one of the world’s ‘Blue Zones’, places that produce high concentrations of centenarians thanks to their culture of socialising, slow living and healthy eating. The culture also includes a moderate approach to drinking alcohol.
Inhabitants of Blue Zones often drink one or two glasses of red wine a day, usually during long meals with friends. It’s an attitude to alcohol that some nutritionists have described as probably the most mature one you can have.
There may be health benefits, too. Red wine contains antioxidants and polyphenols. These two compounds, taken alone, have some cardiovascular benefits. But it doesn’t have to be red wine. Several studies show that people who drink low or moderate amounts of any alcohol also receive the same cardiovascular benefits, and therefore tend to live longer.
So, should we be following the example the Blue Zone inhabitants are setting?
Is there a case for alcohol?
Emmanuela Gakidou, Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington, would like to think that the Blue Zone lifestyle is the healthiest.
Born in Greece, she grew up with the idea that the combination of a Mediterranean diet, physical exercise and moderate, social drinking is a good thing. But, she adds, “If we look at the scientific evidence, the real answer is we don’t really know.”
Though a small industry has been built around the health advantages of adhering in part or in full to the Blue Zone diet, peer-reviewed studies on its nutritional benefits remain few and far between (even the idea that areas like Ikaria contain more centenarians than the average is controversial).
There’s more scientific certainty around the impact of alcohol ingestion. We know that if someone drinks excessively and often, their chances of developing liver disease, pancreatitis and cancer skyrocket. The impacts of low-to-moderate levels of drinking are less clear-cut.
In June 2026, Gakidou co-authored a meta-study of 843 studies about the health impacts of alcohol consumption.
The consensus was that people drinking moderately, or barely anything, were less likely to suffer from ischaemic and haemorrhagic strokes, ischaemic heart disease and Alzheimer’s, compared with teetotallers – and therefore more likely to live longer.
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Does that mean alcohol, drunk in moderate quantities, is therefore the great undiscovered elixir of youth? Not at all, says Eric Rimm, Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
“They live longer because they get less heart disease,” he explains, which kills more people – 17.9 million annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) – than is generally appreciated.
Part of the reason why, says Rimm, is that alcohol at low levels increases the body’s production of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, which helps scrub fat from arterial walls and decreases levels of a blood-clotting compound called fibrinogen, thereby lowering the risk of heart attack-inducing blockages.
In low amounts, alcohol will also increase the body’s sensitivity to insulin, explains Rimm, “which is why people who drink moderately have much lower rates of diabetes.”
He stops short, however, of recommending that anyone should consider drinking a glass of red wine every day. It goes without saying that people with a poor personal or family history with alcohol should abstain, while anyone who suffers mild adverse effects from drinking, like facial flushing, probably shouldn’t start either.
Alcohol consumption even at low levels also raises the risk of other conditions. “Women who have a drink a day have about a 10 per cent higher risk of breast cancer,” says Rimm.
The risk of developing pancreatic, oesophageal and colorectal cancer also rises with low-to-moderate alcohol consumption, says Gakidou, as does the chance of contracting liver disease.
Beyond that, though, the data gets less definitive. While it’s possible to come to general conclusions about the cardiovascular advantages and carcinogenic disadvantages of low alcohol consumption, the variety of studies Gakidou and her colleagues evaluated means that it’s difficult to make statements with the sort of certainty one might have for the long-term effects of smoking.
“It’s just not a very clear picture,” she says.
The other factors at play
Another reason why it’s hard to say for sure is that it’s difficult to filter out other lifestyle decisions from the impact alcohol has on someone’s health.
Take mental wellbeing. In Blue Zones, red wine is usually enjoyed slowly during social meals. That might sound healthy, says Gakidou, but “no one has really quantified the mental health of people that drink in small amounts compared to those that drink [nothing].”
There isn’t even consensus on what type of alcoholic beverage is the healthiest. “They all have alcohol, but they have different quantities, different concentrations. They also have other compounds,” says Rimm.
But what about the antioxidant-rich, polyphenol-stuffed red wine? If it is having a positive impact on longevity, says Rimm, it’s unclear how, as you’d have to drink so much that any positive effect would be outweighed by getting drunk.
Instead, the association with red wine might arise more out of correlation with a generally healthy lifestyle and moderate approach to alcohol than any direct benefits. Though Rimm thinks the Blue Zone lifestyle sounds beneficial, it’s almost impossible to definitively pinpoint the factors that explain why.
“It could just be [that] they have fish, and they don’t [eat] processed red meat,” he says.
Newer studies do a better job of weighing up these overlapping factors, he continues, asking participants about their mental health, dietary habits, body weight and even their sexual activity over long periods of time.
All of these are weighed against where they are in life – relevant as the amount one drinks generally decreases with age – and national trends, like the growing international unpopularity of smoking.
What can we say for certain?
What both Rimm and Gakidou would like is more data, and both are looking forward to the results of a trial in Spain on moderate drinking among older people due to conclude in 2028.
In the meantime, is it useful to even suggest that drinking in moderation can be healthy? That’s the implication behind the current guidelines of the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
It contrasts sharply with the WHO’s conclusion that alcohol’s cardiovascular positives are outweighed by its carcinogenic negatives.
In the UK, meanwhile, the current NHS advice is that adults should drink no more than 14 units per week (slightly below a glass of red wine per day) and that there’s “no completely safe level of drinking”.
Rimm is more equivocal. Alcohol, he argues, “can be part of a healthy lifestyle” when drunk in moderation, but also shouldn’t be held up as something that can be used to reduce one’s risk of developing certain conditions.
What irks him are researchers and activists who believe that drinking any alcohol is completely bad. “We shouldn’t scare people that much about a single drink,” says Rimm.
Absent startling evidence that low-to-moderate amounts of alcohol cause considerable harm, it should be left up to the individual to decide whether it’s appropriate for them. If you have a drink, or three, and wake up the next day with a bad hangover, “well, that’s a sign that maybe you should reduce or eliminate it.”
Gakidou also laments the lack of nuance in conversations around alcohol. If the data about the health impacts of low-to-moderate alcohol consumption shows us anything unequivocally, she argues, it’s that they depend on the person: their age, their predisposition to certain diseases and their attitude to drinking.
“The only overarching statement I’m comfortable making for everybody is that too much alcohol is bad for you,” she says.
Conversely, saying something as definitive as drinking a set low amount is beneficial would be the scientific equivalent of flying too close to the Sun.
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