Wine identified as a weapon against obesity epidemic.

The latest issue of the Internal Medicine Archives has published a report showing that women who drink red wine are 30% less likely to become obese than are those who do not touch the stuff.

Beer drinkers are also at an advantage over teetotallers, as are white wine drinkers, but red wine is the most effective in keeping weight off, according to researchers at Brigham Women's Hospital in Boston. They researched data on 20,000 women over a 13-year period, all of whom had a healthy body mass index (BMI) at the beginning of the programme.

Over the period it was non-drinkers who gained the most weight, and predominantly red wine drinkers who gained the least. Reasons for the differences have not been identified, and the report warns: "Further investigations are warranted to elucidate the role of alcohol intake and alcohol metabolism in energy balance and to identify behavioural, physiological and genetic factors that may modify the alcohol effects."