read time: 359 words, about 3 minutes

The press has been abuzz recently with the results of a study by Harvard Medical School and National Institute on Aging. (Well at least the press I read)

The study looked at the effects of resveratrol on a high fat diet.
Resveratrol is in grapes skins and red wine (made from grapes).

The subjects: 55 male, middle-age (1 year old) mice.
The study: the mice were fed a high fat diet (or as one scientist labeled it - a “McDonald’s diet”)…60% of the calories were from fat. The experimental group was also given a high dose of resveratrol.

Both groups got tubby.
The control group developed signs of future diabetes including grossly enlarged livers and high blood levels of glucose and insulin.
The experimental group did not. The control group also died much sooner than mice fed a standard diet.
Again: both groups got fat, the resveratrol group neither had high blood glucose or fatty liver.

Additionally, the experimental group lived longer and were as agile and active on exercise equipment as mice on a normal mouse diet. Their cholesterol levels were no better than the control group.

Oh, these mice were given the equivalent of 100 glasses of red wine…
I wouldn’t advise you to try to replicate the study with yourself

The study was published in the November edition of Nature… your Library may subscribe to it.
There was also a write up in the [1] New York Times.

Another recent study published in the FASEB Journal (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology) showed aged mice given Cabernet Sauvignon red wine experienced significantly less memory loss.

And one more study - again mice and resverarol. This time from the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in France showed the mice were able to run twice as far and had a lower heart rate.

This line of research (with resveratrol) stems from the “French Paradox”. A phrase coined by Dr. Serge Renaud in the early 1990’s. The wine drinking French eat a high calorie/high fat diet… but don’t experience the cardiovascular disease Americans do.

Now don’t you feel better about that glass of wine?