Posted on 02/20/2004 5:58:22 PM PST by mylife
Take heart, red wine still best for coronary health
By Andy Ho
SCIENCE MONITOR
HOW much red wine is good for the heart?
The French people have a low incidence of heart disease despite a relatively high fat diet. Scientists speculate that this might have something to do with their habit of quaffing lots of red wine. In fact, by the early 1990s, a chemical found in wine called resveratrol had been identified as possibly the molecule doing the trick.
To date, a lot of animal experiments indicate that resveratrol combats 'bad' cholesterol which damages the heart. Specifically, it quenches free radicals, those particularly reactive atoms that can start chain reactions which lead to cell damage.
When bad cholesterol is acted upon by free radicals, it leads to hardening and narrowing of arteries (atherosclerosis). Resveratrol helps scavenge the free radicals and terminates the chain reactions before atherosclerosis worsens.
The most abundant natural source of resveratrol in the Western world is the fruit of the vine, though it is also found in plant species like lilies, mulberries and peanuts. It occurs in the vines, roots, seeds and stalks of the grape plant but is most concentrated in grape skin (not flesh).
Red wine has more of the molecule - almost 10 times more. This has to do with how long grape skins are present during fermentation. Red wine is fermented with grape skins left on for much longer while for white wine, the skins are removed early in the process.
It also depends on where the grape is grown because resveratrol belongs to a class of compounds that plants produce to fight stresses such as cold weather, fungal attacks and lack of nutrients. Since fungi thrive in colder, wetter climes, grapes grown in such localities have more of the magic molecule.
Thus resveratrol appears most in red wines produced in cooler areas with more disease problems, like Burgundy and New York, rather than warmer, drier climates like Australia or California. In a recent Cornell University study of 111 United States and foreign red wines of 1995 vintages, those from the northern state of New York had the highest resveratrol concentration.
Does this mean that health is as close as the nearest bottle of red wine? Not necessarily.
Besides heavy drinkers having higher rates of nerve disease as well as brain, oesophageal, liver and breast cancers, there is no guarantee your red wine has enough of the molecule.
First, as mentioned above, resveratrol content varies widely depending on where the grapes are grown, so those from harsher northern climates do better. However, because insecticides and fungicides are almost invariably used, the plants are not stressed by disease very much. This means they produce little of the molecule anyway. What you really need is organic red wine produced without the use of fungicides or any other chemical.
Secondly, once a bottle is uncorked, even if it is an organic Burgundy, oxygen in the air begins to break down the resveratrol so that any wine kept overnight will have little of it left. You may drink it all each time you uncork a bottle but this could be a slippery slide into alcoholism.
What's an imbiber to do?
As luck would have it, there is a more stable and concentrated source in an Oriental plant called hu zhang or false bamboo, a member of the buckwheat family that goes by the scientific name of Polygonum cuspidatum. Its roots far exceed grape skin in resveratrol content.
Predictably, the nutritional supplement industry has already been marketing lots of resveratrol pills, putatively hu zhang root extracts. These are made mainly in China and the US but it is technically very difficult to standardise concentrations of the active molecule.
Moreover, its breakdown on exposure to oxygen during extraction and storage in ordinary containers that are not vacuum-sealed makes the product shelf-life questionable. Remember, nutritional supplements are not considered drugs, so they are unregulated. This means you may not be getting the 100 per cent resveratrol the label promises.
But if you don't mind genetically-modified (GM) food, there will soon be a resveratrol-enriched lettuce in local stores. Associate Professor Chia Tet Fatt of the National Institute of Education has inserted into the red leaf lettuce the very gene from grapes that makes resveratrol. Since it is leafy, this lettuce makes many times more of the molecule than grapes do.
However, for the health-conscious who do not trust both GM food and the supplement industry, imbibing organic red wine occasionally may be the best bet for now.
The answer to that problem is to never allow a bottle to sit unfinished for an extended period of time. Cheers!
which is common sense of course, unless you were attempting to make vinegar.
Me too. Nothing but California, Italian, Australian and Spanish wines for the past year in this household!
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