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A free lunch..with red wine

If you look at the fat consumption per person across the globe, which country would you guess heads the list? Probably the U.S' was the reflexive answer to my informal poll. Nyah. Wrong answer. We are the eighth on the list, as compiled by the Statistics division of the FAO. Heading the list isdrumroll, please, France. However, if you look at the incidence of coronary heart disease, probably much to the delight of the French, the French are well behind the U.S. The so-called French paradox' has long puzzled the rest of the world, or at least the parts that care about puzzling about such things.

Many reasons are attributed to the French paradox, and sometime in the early 90s CBS's <> suggested that it was red wine. Winemakers worldwide celebrated (with red wine) and wine sales shot up 44%, according to some estimates.

The magical substance behind all this is supposed to be resveratrol (for those who fantasize about being on Jeopardy, 3,5,4'-trihydroxystilbene). It is a substance found in the skin of grapes- and red wine, since red wine is red because the grape juice is fermented along with skins of grapes.

Resveratrol has been shown to increase the life span of many diverse life forms- yeast, worms, flies, fish, probably the French, and now, the latest, mice. Those of us who have not taken a break from regular news programming can't have failed to notice the story- it was everywhere, newspapers, magazines, radio, internet, TV, all the usual and unusual media outlets. Research at Harvard University and the National Institute for Aging indicated mice that were fed a high calorie diet could offset the bad effects of the diet when they were also fed resveratrol. Not only did it extend the lifespan of the mice, it also prevented the usual effects of rich food- diabetes, enlarged livers and such. What welcome news, in time for the holiday stuffing! A free lunch does exist.

This all ties into something that has been known for the last 70 years or so- animals that are fed a diet that has about half the normally-required calories (but with the required levels of vitamins and stuff) live about 50% longer, and don't seem to get many of the aging related diseases. A gene (called SIR-2 in yeast and SIRT-1 in mice) senses the level of metabolic activity and triggers specific protective steps to help the body ride out the famine'. But living on half the usual calories is not a pleasant prospect for most people, even if it means living longer and healthier. Some red wine, though, doesn't sound so bad! Resveratrol could perhaps be acting through the SIRT-1 gene, or so the thinking goes.

But before we try to down a few glasses of red while gorging ourselves: Resveratrol is present only in small doses in wine- the mice were fed 11milligrams for each pound of body weight. If the dosages will hold true for humans (no one knows yet), a 120 lb man (or woman) would have to take 1.3 grams of resveratrol. In a bottle (750ml) of red wine, you might find just more than a milligram of resveratrol- which means you would have to drink about a thousand bottles a day to get the same dosage as the mice were getting. That's right, only 999 more bottles to go. And who knows if resveratrol will even work in humans. And if it does, what would the right dose be? "Have another glass of pinot noir that's as far as I'd take it right now," says Dr. Ronald Kahn, director of the Joslin Diabetes Center, in an interview with the New York Times.

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