Look on the back of virtually every bottle of wine you buy and you'll find the following warning:   CONTAINS SULFITES

Gosh, that sounds bad. Quaffing a glass of sulfites doesn't sound particularly healthy or appetizing. What are sulfites? The notice is right there with the Surgeon General's warning. Should you be concerned the next time you pop a cork?

In short, unless you are sulfite-sensitive, the answer is "no." 

Sulfites occur naturally in some foods. They exist in fermented products such as beer and wine as they are produced by yeasts in the fermentation process. Additional sulfites or sulfur dioxide is commonly added to wine to prevent oxidation and bacterial activity. That is, to preserve color and taste. Since July 1987, the U.S. government has required the sulfites warning label on all alcoholic beverages with at least 10 parts per million of sulfur dioxide. Because sulfites are naturally produced in the wine making process, even "sulfite-free" wines contain some amount of sulfites. However, because they contain less than 10 ppm, they qualify as "sulfite-free." Organic wines have sulfites. Even "sulfite-free" wines have sulfites. In other words, if you're drinking wine, you're drinking sulfites. That's just the way the cork the crumbles. 

But it's not just wine. The Mayo Clinic lists the following foods as commonly containing sulfites:

Cookies, crackers, pie and pizza crusts, flour tortillas, bakery products containing dried fruits or vegetables, beer, cocktail mixes, beverage mixes, wine, wine coolers, filled milk (milk enriched in fat content with vegetable oil), canned clams, dried cod; fresh, frozen, canned and dried shrimp; frozen lobster; scallops, processed fruit including canned, bottled, or frozen fruit; dried fruit; canned, bottled, or frozen "dietetic" fruit for fruit juices; maraschino cherries, glazed fruit, precut potatoes, condiments and relishes (horseradish, onion and pickle relish, pickles, olives, salad dressing mixes, wine vinegar); guacamole dip, confections and frostings containing brown, raw, powdered, or white sugar derived from sugar beets

Certainly shortens my grocery list.

If sulfites are so ubiquitous, why the big warning label on wines? (This topic begs for one of my Prohibition rants, but I'll spare you my soap box). The FDA warns of sulfites because a portion of the population is sulfite-sensitive. That is, they may suffer an adverse reaction to sulfites. In an informative, well-written article, they Organic Wine Company summarized the sulfite risk as follows:

The FDA says only about .4% of the population, or about a million people, is considered highly allergic to sulfites. According to Dr. Vincent Marinkovich, an allergist and clinical immunologist who has performed extensive research, . . . sulfites pose no danger to about 99.75% of the population; the highest risk group are asthmatics (about 5% of the population) and only about 5% of this group is allergic to sulfites.

Read the full article at http://www.ecowine.com