Red wine .. is it good or bad for you? American and Swedish scientists couldn't disagree more
Red wine doesn’t promote a long and healthy life, according to American scientists who have looked closer at resveratrol, an antioxidant found in wine.
But Swedish professor Fredrik Nyström doesn’t agree at all. The Americans’ study was published in Jama, the medical paper, and showed that resveratrol has no bearing on inflammation, cardiovascular problems, cancer or length of life, according to AFP. Previous animal experiments have shown that the substance, which is also found in certain Asian roots as well as in peanuts and berries, have health benefits. Although it hasn’t been proven in human trials, these findings have added to supplements with resveratrol being sold for $30 million a year, in the U.S. only. This has professor in internal medicine Fredrik Nyström in Linköping upset.
”I don’t understand how they got the article published,” he says. ”It is a myth that resveratrol is healthy. Those of us who conduct research in a more objective way about alcohol and cardiovascular diseases have long ago discovered that it is the alcohol that’s beneficial,” Nyström says.
And cardiologist Blase Carabello at Mount Sinai Beth Israel agrees, saying in a comment: ”If there’s any merit in red wine, it doesn’t seem to be linked to resveratrol specifically.” In a study conducted by scientists at John Hopkins University, the levels of resveratrol in urine were measured in close to 800 people in two small villages in Italy’s Tuscany. The people were 65 or older when the study commenced in 1998. After nine years, the scientists could find no link between the levels of the antioxidant and different diseases. What is usually referred to as the French paradox (meaning that the French can eat fatty foods and drink a lot of alcohol and still not hit the roof when it comes to the diseases mentioned) also upsets Nyström.
”It is no longer a paradox! In the 1970s we thought that saturated fat was dangerous, but research today shows that it is good to eat fatty foods. What remains to be examined in the French paradox is why they could smoke so much and still not suffer from cardiovascular diseases.”