A toast to health

THE WINE CLUB

A bon vivant of my acquaintance has a new motto: "Drink more wine - be happier and healthier!" Happier, one understands. Wine has alcohol and drinking a glass or two produces a sense of well-being that is further reinforced if the wine is of good quality.

We know that wine drinkers like to savour the stuff and appreciate its ability to produce a euphoric state of mind. But healthier?

We know that wine drinkers like to savour the stuff and appreciate its ability to produce a euphoric state of mind. But healthier?

Determined to investigate the rationale for this assertion, I started looking at the evidence and found that there's a large body of research that supports the link between wine and health "" among the most well-known of which is what is known as the French Paradox.

On November 10, 1991, the American TV station CBS featured a story "The French Paradox" on its programme 60 Minutes, broadcast coast to coast in the US and watched by over 20 million viewers.

This essentially reported on research that seemed to indicate an inconsistency (or paradox) between the lifestyle of the French people and the incidence of heart ailments. In spite of a richer diet (butter, cheese, eggs and sauces) than Americans, Frenchmen had only 40 per cent of the rate of heart diseases that Americans suffered.

This was linked to the fact that the French regularly drank red wine with their food "" apparently there was something in red wine that protected them from the deleterious effects of a diet rich in fatty foods.

Of course, this had wine companies (in particular, the producers of Bordeaux wines in France) crowing with glee as there was a boom in consumption of red wine in America; conversely, many commentators sought to debunk the hypothesis by saying that it was motivated by (French) wine producers.

However, subsequent research has verified the salubrious effects of drinking red wine. A study released in 1995 by medical researchers in Copenhagen, done over a 12-year period, reported that people who consumed 3-5 glasses of wine per day had only half the mortality risk of those who did not drink at all; beer and alcohol (hard liquor) did not provide such protection.

After much research, scientists are of the opinion that polyphenols (natural substances found in abundance in red wine) act as antioxidants, inhibiting the formation of blood clots and producing a more favourable HDL-LDL cholesterol ratio.

Of course, this has to be combined with a "Mediterranean" lifestyle (which the French are famous for), which includes regular exercise both in bed as well as in the gym.

Plato had said (probably of wine): "Nothing more excellent nor more valuable was ever granted mankind by God"; now you can also take the word of leading doctors for it "" of course, this doesn't mean you go out and start knocking back a bottle a day as that would only do you in. Salud!

(al.chandra@gmail.com)