Nature's Rite AidTime and time again scientists find that red wine is actually good for you (duh). Just recently, researchers at Harvard Medical School and the National Institutes on Aging reported that a substance found in red wine, resveratrol, appears to offset some of the negative effects of a high-fat diet. The mice in the study were fed high fat diets and also given resveratrol. They gained weight, but their livers were normal, and so were their glucose and insuline levels. It is a little early to rush Burger King, though. Remember that about a decade ago, medical researchers were going gaga over the hormone leptin, which caused mice to lose a whole bunch of weight in a very short time. It had no effect on humans at all.
Still, there's the French Paradox (the French eat fatty foods but don't suffer from a lot of the consequences), which might be related to resveratrol. So there may be something in all of this. A tiny technicality, though: to get the same amount of resveratrol that turned the mice into happy, healthy fatties, a human being would need to drink between 1,500 and 3,000 bottles of wine a day. So, what are you waiting for? Time's a-wastin'!
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