“I can’t drink red wine because it gives me a headache.”
I hear this all the time, usually followed by, “It’s the sulfites. I can’t tolerate them, so I have to drink white wine.” The people who say this may well be right that red wine gives them a headache, but I’m pretty sure that a large number of them are wrong about the cause.
The first reason I’m sure that many of these folks are wrong is because, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, only about one in a hundred of us are truly sensitive to sulfites without any underlying medical condition. Another very small percent of the population is potentially sensitive to sulfites because they suffer from asthma. Sulfites can and do trigger asthma attacks, but asthma attacks don’t manifest as headaches.
But medical facts aside, there is an even bigger reason to be suspicious of the sulfites-in-red-wine-give-me-a-headache claim. The fact is, there are actually more sulfites in white wine than in red!
