I'm just curious. I'm new to the forum. My impression from reading through the posts is that a lot of people here don't drink/enjoy red wine. This seems ironic, to me at least. Is my impression wrong?
I do understand that people are taking amounts of resveratrol that would be impossible to get from red wine.
I'm not a huge fan of alcohol therefore not a big fan of red wine. That being said, alcohol in small amounts (one serving per day) has been show to have positive effects on numerous things such as blood pressure, raising HDL cholesterol, cardiovascular disease etc. However, the therapeutic window is very small and more than one serving per day begins to approach the effects seen with no alcohol consumed. So how much resveratrol, tannins and associated compounds are in the healthy choice of one glass of red wine per day, in my opinion not very much, thus supplementation is the only option.
The whole red wine for long life concept derives mostly it seems from the french paradox idea which is really a media creation. Basically the French eat a lot of saturated fat and "rich" food yet live substantially longer and have less cv disease than Americans, British, Canadians etc. so voila! it must be the red wine consumed with every meal. In my opion its the fact that their diet is much more varied than "ours" and contains many more wholesome fresh ingredients. The ORAC value per day, as well as the varied sources of compounds contributing to this, is probably much higher than the average western diet. Also the French lifestyle may very well be less stressful as in my study of French in school it was often noted that the French work fewer hours and spend more time participating in recreational activities, less time commuting etc. etc. all factors in CV disease.
Edited by edward, 11 April 2008 - 01:12 AM.