Fascinating. Perhaps this is a key insight into the French Paradox— they smoke, eat lots of butter and cheese, etc— everything we’re told not to do. And yet they live longer and in particular with less heart disease. Given that heart disease has an only-recently-recognized inflammatory component (arterial plaque is a symptom, not a cause, of that— it increasingly appears to be the body’s attempt to band-aid irritated vessels), and given that the French use a lot of olive oil, maybe we’re looking at a clue here.