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“Drink wine and live forever.” That’s what the ad said.
Yeah, right.
That’s right up there with, “Eat all you want and still lose weight.” Or, “One size fits all.” Or, “Clean up is a snap.” In the drink-wine-and-live-forever ad the doctor schilling long life said that a compound produced in grape vines, also found in peanuts and eucalyptus, called resveratrol, was the cure for death.
Resveratrol is a phenolic compound that exists in grape vines to protect them from microbes and UV rays. The phenolic compounds found in all parts of the grape plant and fruit can be divided into flavonoid and non-flavonoid parts. Flavonoids do just what the name suggests, they make things flavorful. There is much more to this but to spare one from glazing over we’ll state simply that phenolic compounds are the building blocks of the plant world.
Broadly stated the role of resveratrol in the grape vine is to protect the woody part of the vine from decay, protect from fungal attack and to stop or slow infection within the vine. Sort of the white blood cells of the vine.
It isn’t difficult to see how a good scientist might arrive at the conclusion that isolating the part of the grape plant that does all these good things might be good for people. The better part is that the good scientist had already arrived at a way of isolating the resveratrol compounds. It’s called wine.
Pinot noir tends to have the greatest amount of resveratrol while Cabernet Sauvignon is much lower. Wines from colder places like Austria, Burgundy, New York and Canada are higher in resveratrol while wines from hot spots like California and Australia. Reds are usually ten times higher in resveratrol than whites.
In the early part of this century reports began to emerge (see Creasy and Siemann) stating that moderate consumption of red wine was good for one’s health. What was dubbed the French Paradox, or a solution to the riddle of why the French seldom suffered from heart disease compared to other nationalities, prompted deeper research. Resveratrol was found to lower the lipid levels in the livers of rats, then it was found to reduce cholesterol and fend of cancer and not so long after that the miracle compound was put into pill form and has been flying of the druggist’s shelves allegedly causing people to live longer.
So, if you want to live a long time drink red wine in moderation. Who ever thought it could be that simple?
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