Finishing each dinner with a glass of red wine might to be a good idea for people with diabetes, Israeli researchers claim.

The drink appears to boost levels of “good cholesterol,” thus helping to contain the disease.

The benefit of drinking red wine was discovered as a result of a two-year-long experiment involving 220 people with type 2 diabetes. They kept to a standard Mediterranean diet, not restricted by calories, but were randomized into three groups – those who drank 150 ml of mineral water after dinner, and either white wine or red wine.

The group of red wine drinkers got higher levels of the so-called “good cholesterol,” or HDL, which helps fight “bad cholesterol,” or LDL, and also protects against heart attacks and strokes. In general, people with diabetes are more predisposed to heart diseases than the general population.