Possibly it’s histamines or tyramines giving trouble, rather than sulfites…
This article, e.g., gives some ideas on the possible causes of Red Wine Headaches…(Disclaimer: It’s not a scientific article. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. I mainly use this type of article to give me some thoughts about what I might look into, and what I might experiment with myself, in trying to track down my own body’s issues around food-sensitivity/reactions/symptoms.)
After years of reading and self-experimentation, I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that I have serious histamine intolerance, which means, among other things, that foods that are high in histamine can give me unpleasant physical symptoms. Red wine is high in histamine, and does give me headaches. At this point, pretty much the only alcohol I buy for my own consumption, if I do want alcohol in the house, is vodka, which is not high in histamine. (The question then is what to mix it with that isn’t going to give me trouble either.)
Anyway, that’s probably more personal info than I need to give here, but I mention it in case it helps anyone else. Some of the most help I’ve gotten in trying to track down causes for my own physical symptoms has come from anecdotal info in comments sections on the internet—sometimes a small clue that seems to fit for me, a crumb to follow, can open up a fruitful area of inquiry
Are you aware of having any food sensitivities? Based on my own food sensitivities and personal experimentation, what you’ve said gave me the thought that you could possibly have a food-sensitivity to ingredients that are in one but not the other.
Googling quick for ingredients, it looks like Stella Artois contains only four ingredients: maize, hops, malted barley and water.
It looks like the ingredients in Chimay are: water, malted barley, wheat starch, sugar, hop extract and yeast; malt extract is used in Rouge and Bleue for colouring.
If it’s the Stella Artois that gives you trouble, is there any chance that you might have some sensitivity to maize (corn)?
Health: Most people claim that the reason a glass of red wine a day is “healthy” is the antioxidants. But a glass of grape juice has the same amount of antioxidants. Better yet eat a whole piece of fruit. Funny how you never see comparisons of wine versus other antioxidants in these studies of “healthiness”.
Taste: You can taste much more complex flavors in non-alcoholic craft drinks. The alcohol hides most of the flavors. Personally I would rather eat food if I’m trying to be a connoisseur; textureless drinks just don’t feel full spectrum enough for my senses. But I know there are people who genuinely like the taste of alcohol drinks so much that they will buy alcohol free beer and wine. Just as there are people who seek out companions that resemble their past abusers.
Hangover: The thing about most drugs is that the hangover and aftereffects extend over days, weeks, even your whole future life, while the benefits last much less than a day. Humans are just not good at intuitively making tradeoffs with large but diffuse consequences.
I do think there are some people whose lives really are better with alcohol. But there are a lot more whose lives only seem better with alcohol. The way it digs into the pleasure centers of the brain makes rational evaluation difficult and often impossible. Add on all the cultural habituation of associating alcohol with celebration, and the advertising making it seem sophisticated (even required) to get acute brain discombobulation.
The number of UK units of alcohol in a drink can be determined by multiplying the volume of the drink (in ouces) by its proof and multiplying by 0.0148
So, a standard fifth of 27 proof wine would contain 10.2 units of alcohol.
Next time you pop down to the pub, bring a calculator!
Yeah, I shall stick to drinking 0.5 litre glasses (or the full litre at Oktoberfest). Beer tends to be 4.5 - 6.0% Alc./vol, so a one litre Maß of Löwenbräu will have 55ml of ethanol in it. (It’s about 6%, true, but the things are actually around 950ml full and not the full 1000ml).
Living on the continent, you drop all those quirky terms like “proof”, “pint” and so on and just use standard metrics. Prost!
I think I’ve had a glass and a half on champagne in my life. I don’t think I am going to live any longer because of my near complete abstinence. Maybe, with all my health issues, I should start drinking and see if that helps. Although, I don’t think I’m meant to be drinking while on dex.
One caveat: when the ‘red wine is healthy’ thing became news, I remember reading a lot of similar thoughts about grape juice vs. wine and its antioxidant contents. And while they’re both just the juice of grapes, red wine seemed to do a better job of improving cardiac health than grape juice. Like using vodka to unlock flavor compounds in tomatoes for vodka sauce, something about the alcohol/fermentation process seems to make red wine ‘healthier’ (well, except for the alcohol part, which is apparently unhealthy in other ways).
As my friends and I have entered our 40s, we’ve all realized that things like wine/cocktail pairings in fancy restaurants are terrible ideas. By the fourth course your senses are dulled enough that you’re just lulled and pleasantly sleepy, and any complex flavors in your drink or your food are lost; you may as well be eating a hamburger.
There’s a fantastic restaurant near me (too pricey to return to these days) that offers a beer, wine, cocktail, sake, or non-alcoholic pairing with your food. The one time we went, my group all got sake or wine pairings, except for my teetotaler friend who went non-alcoholic. His drinks (all juices, infusions, and teas) were so imaginative and flavorful that we all wished we’d gone that road.
That makes me think about “alcohol-removed” (or “dealcoholized”) wine…Would it give the same health results as regular wine, or would the alcohol need to remain in it, I wonder?
A bar near me makes fantastic mocktails and they are giddy to improvise. Last New Year’s I asked for ‘something with cardamom’ and received a delicious concoction, about the consistency of skim milk, made with cocoa, cardamom, and other botanicals. Perfectly sweet, with a little sourness, bitterness, and astringency to balance everything out.
What? It can’t be that easy!
next, you’ll be telling me that the BMI has no conversion factor.
When using English measurements, ounces (oz) and fractions must be changed to decimal values. Then, calculate BMI by dividing weight in pounds (lb) by height in inches (in) squared and multiplying by a conversion factor of 703.
For each set of 100,000 people who have one drink a day per year, 918 can expect to experience one of the 23 alcohol-related problems in any year. Of those who drink nothing, 914 can expect to experience a problem. This means that 99,082 are unaffected, and 914 will have an issue no matter what. Only 4 in 100,000 people who consume a drink a day may have a problem caused by the drinking, according to this study.
At two drinks per day, the number experiencing a problem increased to 977. Even at five drinks per day, which most agree is too much, the vast majority of people are unaffected.
also
Of course, some drink too much without knowing it. For this study, a drink was defined as 10 grams of pure alcohol, as much as you might get in one ounce of spirits (a small shot glass) that is 40 percent alcohol; 3.4 ounces of wine that’s 13 percent alcohol; or 12 ounces of beer that’s 3.5 percent alcohol. Many people consume more than that and consider it “a drink.”
the “unit of alcohol” which is so easy for metric users to understand, and so difficult for the holdouts to calculate.
Looking at my drinking patterns, it’s clear that tend to I drink in two unit quantities–
