Resveratrol is good for your health but don't drink wine!

This astounding statement was made during a “Health” report on France’s popular Télématin programme. It may surprise admirers of French gastronomic culture to learn that a veritable public health fascism flourishes in France to such an extent that progamme presenters are afraid of making any favourable reference to wine (la Loi Evin).

Similar public health fascism is on roll in my native Britain where Ministers are giving themselves a mission to curb middle class drinking at home.

These fascists are fortified by the success of bans on smoking in public places, about which, as a lifelong non-smoker, I feel quite ambivalent. I do now enjoy going into restaurants and bars which I used to avoid because of the thick wall of smoke but fear the thin end of the wedge, namely that similar arguments could be applied against wine consumption.

At least we are spared in Europe the spuriously religious bigotry which reinforces the anti-drink lobby.

As someone living in a country that has had an unfortunate brush with prohibitionism and where wine distribution channels still reflect that backward legacy, I have to ask what the genesis of this movement is in France, of all places. Some have said that it is to get tough on impaired driving ... and although this is a serious issue anywhere, I don't think it's just that. I have a slightly more cynical suspicion: Could the anti-alcohol rhetoric be a tool to try to instill a new style of workaholism into the French populace? After all, if you actually care about fine gastronomy, you have to take some time out of your day or week to enjoy it ... but if your life begins to revolve around the "virtue" of economic productivity and you heroically shun artisanal food in favour of "time saving" processed/fast foods, then don't some people end up making more money as a result? Another way of wording it might be, "in whose interest is it to do away with balanced lives and a love of good living"?

This astounding statement was made during a “Health” report on France’s popular Télématin programme. It may surprise admirers of French gastronomic culture to learn that a veritable public health fascism flourishes in France to such an extent that progamme presenters are afraid of making any favourable reference to wine (la Loi Evin).

The bitter irony here, Tim, is that the health benefits of resveratrol are likely only available in the form of wine. Resveratrol is rapidly modified in the liver to forms (sulfates and glycosides) that are essentially inactive. However, other components of wine (genestein most importantly) have been shown to inhibit those modifications, thereby enhancing resverstrol's activities.

Mark Lipton

. Maybe I could call you sometime for an interview as well?

Don't you know? Mark's the Lina Lamont of the Purdue faculty. Has grad students read his lectures, as otherwise his Jimmy Durante meets Tom Waits on helium voice is too distracting. Very sad, actually.

Mark (excuse the slight topic drift) I just today interviewed a researcher at Université de Bordeaux, faculté d'oenologie and one of the things that came out of the discussion was polyphenols and their relation to the color of Malbec grape skins. Looking around the net, I see polyphenols touted for their health benefits. Is resveratol a polyphenol? Could you say anything about the relation of polyphenols to color in plants, or something equally checmical and geeky?

Nope, resveratrol is smaller, a diphenol, and related to the isoflavonoids. For that matter, the color in grape skins is attributable to anthocyanins, the same things that color many flowers such as hydrangea, which are also not polyphenols. Tannins, however, are polyphenols, are found in grape skins and are also knows are proanthocyanins FWIW.

btw, I'll probably play some parts of the interview on a special Shoe in out series. Maybe I could call you sometime for an interview as well?

I'm writing a small proposal right now (due 1/15), but if time's not of the essence, PM me and we'll set up a time.

Mark Lipton

. Maybe I could call you sometime for an interview as well?

Don't you know? Mark's the Lina Lamont of the Purdue faculty. Has grad students read his lectures, as otherwise his Jimmy Durante meets Tom Waits on helium voice is too distracting. Very sad, actually.

Well, that's just the aftereffect of the sex change operation, Dale. Now that that cat's out of the bag, I suppose there's nothing holding me back from telling them what you really do with Lucy the Basset Hound...

Lina Lamont
(Whom I had to Google for background)

This astounding statement was made during a “Health” report on France’s popular Télématin programme. It may surprise admirers of French gastronomic culture to learn that a veritable public health fascism flourishes in France to such an extent that progamme presenters are afraid of making any favourable reference to wine (la Loi Evin).

The bitter irony here, Tim, is that the health benefits of resveratrol are likely only available in the form of wine. Resveratrol is rapidly modified in the liver to forms (sulfates and glycosides) that are essentially inactive. However, other components of wine (genestein most importantly) have been shown to inhibit those modifications, thereby enhancing resverstrol's activities.

Mark Lipton

Mark, what angered me about this television report, and many others like it, was the Politically Correct knee-jerk reaction of the presenting journalist that wine should NOT be drunk in spite of the previous acknowledgment by a research professor of the presence of resveratrol in wine, albeit in small quantities. The programme's recommendation was the consumption of large quantities of grapes and unfermented grape juice and, in due course, a resveratrol pill!

My "bible" on such matters, Roger Corder's "The Wine Diet" argues that the beneficial effect of resveratrol in normal wine consumption has been vastly overstated since over 5 litres of wine per day would be need to achieve the claimed health benefits. Corder identifies procyanidins as the most beneficial of the polyphenols in normal consumption of wine and the one most responsible for the "French paradox".

Whether the benefit comes from procyanidins or resveratrol, on which I lack the scientific competence to comment, I am sure that this television presenter (and most others) would continue to insist in public that wine should not be drunk. (It is quite possible that, in private, she is a moderate consumer of wine.)

As someone living in a country that has had an unfortunate brush with prohibitionism and where wine distribution channels still reflect that backward legacy, I have to ask what the genesis of this movement is in France, of all places. Some have said that it is to get tough on impaired driving ... and although this is a serious issue anywhere, I don't think it's just that. I have a slightly more cynical suspicion: Could the anti-alcohol rhetoric be a tool to try to instill a new style of workaholism into the French populace? After all, if you actually care about fine gastronomy, you have to take some time out of your day or week to enjoy it ... but if your life begins to revolve around the "virtue" of economic productivity and you heroically shun artisanal food in favour of "time saving" processed/fast foods, then don't some people end up making more money as a result? Another way of wording it might be, "in whose interest is it to do away with balanced lives and a love of good living"?

Paul, I don't have the expertise to do a proper historical thesis on the development of these attitudes but I can say what I have observed. Up to the 50s, alcoholism was a very real social problem, which was largely unaddressed. This was not binge drinking typical of Northern Europe but steady consumption over the day of a large quantity of alcohol, particularly in the agricultural, fishing and industrial labouring classes. France used to lead in statistics of deaths from cirrhosis of the liver. Add to that the frightening toll of road accidents and it was clear that action was overdue. Another factor which favours anti-alcohol campaigning is the national fixation with the body beautiful.

Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France, who asked for milk at public banquets, spearheaded a campaign to reduce alcoholic consumption. A slogan "jamais plus d'un litre de vin par jour" was coined which, in itself, shows the scope of the problem which they were facing. Over the decades the campaign has been reinforced with highlights being la Loi Evin of the early 90s restricting advertising of drink and particularly favourable reporting on television and the progressively tougher crack-down on drink and driving.

One has to applaud the progress which has been made. One might think that an acceptable plateau of alcohol consumption, particular for drivers, is close to being reached but this only seems to intensify, and not abate, the passion of those whom I dub "Public Health Fascists".

Hey, not nice to besmirch Lucy's reputation (mine was already well smirched)

So are flavanoids (sp?) same as polyphenols, or is one a subset of the other? I remember hearing that Tannat is especially heavy in one of these beneficial compounds.

A slogan "jamais plus d'un litre de vin par jour" was coined which, in itself, shows the scope of the problem which they were facing.

Now that is eye opening! Thanks for the useful info, Tim. I had absolutely no idea that some people were drinking so much in a day, most likely every day. Good grief, I go through .75 litres of wine in about 3 days ...

Still, I agree that the "nanny state" should be watched for overzealous moralizing, or worse, villification of wine altogether.

Hey, not nice to besmirch Lucy's reputation (mine was already well smirched)

Did I ever claim to be nice? I think not. Anyway, Lucy is just an innocent victim of your depraved lifestyle, Dale

So are flavanoids (sp?) same as polyphenols, or is one a subset of the other? I remember hearing that Tannat is especially heavy in one of these beneficial compounds.

No, flavonoids are derivatives of flavone, a small molecule:
http://www.benbest.com/nutrceut/flavone.jpg

http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/flavonoids/flavone.jpg

Likewise, isoflavonoids are based on a closely related small molecule:

http://www.ehponline.org/members/2003/5928/fig1.jpg

Mark Lipton
Oenochemgeek

Polyphenols, OTOH, are polymeric in nature and relatively ill-defined. Their building blocks could be either flavonoids or isoflavonoids.

This astounding statement was made during a “Health” report on France’s popular Télématin programme. It may surprise admirers of French gastronomic culture to learn that a veritable public health fascism flourishes in France to such an extent that progamme presenters are afraid of making any favourable reference to wine (la Loi Evin).

Similar public health fascism is on roll in my native Britain where Ministers are giving themselves a mission to curb middle class drinking at home.

These fascists are fortified by the success of bans on smoking in public places, about which, as a lifelong non-smoker, I feel quite ambivalent. I do now enjoy going into restaurants and bars which I used to avoid because of the thick wall of smoke but fear the thin end of the wedge, namely that similar arguments could be applied against wine consumption.

I was struck by your use of the word "fascists" in your review, Tim. It reminded me of a book I read recently on the German Nazis and their public health campaigns. From a recent review of a book on those campaigns:

From the vantage point of a late-twentieth-century observer, the public health policies of the National Socialists who ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945 seem surprisingly modern. Those policies are illuminated in Robert N. Proctor's most recent work, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), which documents the war on cancer and other public health campaigns by the Nazis. A historian of science at Pennsylvania State University, Proctor has written extensively on medicine, public health, and their relations with politics and, especially, with National Socialism.

The Nazi government was known, and admired, for implementing the most progressive public health policies in their time. State-of-the-art research and regulation were applied to occupational, environmental, and lifestyle diseases. Cancer was declared "the number one enemy of the state." Nazi policy favored natural food and opposed fat, sugar, alcohol, and sedentary lifestyles. The existing temperance movement against alcohol and tobacco became more active under the Nazis, who were involved in what Proctor calls "creating a secure and sanitary utopia."


http://www.pierrelemieux.org/artproctor.html

Well worth reading the rest of the review, and I recommend the book as a different way to view the Nazi regime.

You know, Bob, for some of the "enlightened" health policies that they seemed to have, it's amazingly ironic how unenlightened their approach was toward other peoples ... That said, it is a curiosity for sure that already in the 1930s there were the beginnings of an anti-tobacco movement that, as we well know, didn't accumulate interest in the West until much later.

Bob Ross wrote -

"I was struck by your use of the word "fascists" in your review, Tim. It reminded me of a book I read recently on the German Nazis and their public health campaigns."



Thank you , Bob, for the link to that fascinating article by Pierre Lemieux, which gives much food for thought.

There are three quotes which particularly impress me.

"Let us recall that fascism is based on the subjection of the individual to the collective."

"Let us recall further that, everywhere in the West,public health doctrine has drifted.....towards a frontal attack on individual choices and politically incorrect lifestyles."

"If F (fascism) implies P (public health), it does not follow that P implies F."

Whilst not wanting to fall into the last trap, it is hard to deny that Public Health zealots are using some totalitarian techniques such as bending the truth and intimidating those who might spell out the truth. This French television programme was a case in point. The truth that alcohol consumption can be beneficial up to certain limits is not allowed to be spoken on television and there are implied sanctions against any presenter who contravenes this taboo. (I need to research what exactly those sanctions are under la Loi Evin).

Of course the sanctions in modern France, a true democracy, are nothing comparable with those in Nazi Germany. For example,the presenter does not risk concentration camp not do alcoholics face sterilization.

These fascists are fortified by the success of bans on smoking in public places, about which, as a lifelong non-smoker, I feel quite ambivalent. I do now enjoy going into restaurants and bars which I used to avoid because of the thick wall of smoke but fear the thin end of the wedge, namely that similar arguments could be applied against wine consumption.

Of course the big difference is that secondhand smoke has been shown to be detrimental to those not smoking but sharing space, as opposed to alcohol which has no equivalent. Certainly there are some social costs to alcohol abuse, due to drunk driving, violence/vandalism by drunks, and the costs of medical issues. But they don't flow directly from the act itself, as is the case with smoking.

These fascists are fortified by the success of bans on smoking in public places, about which, as a lifelong non-smoker, I feel quite ambivalent. I do now enjoy going into restaurants and bars which I used to avoid because of the thick wall of smoke but fear the thin end of the wedge, namely that similar arguments could be applied against wine consumption.

Of course the big difference is that secondhand smoke has been shown to be detrimental to those not smoking but sharing space, as opposed to alcohol which has no equivalent. Certainly there are some social costs to alcohol abuse, due to drunk driving, violence/vandalism by drunks, and the costs of medical issues. But they don't flow directly from the act itself, as is the case with smoking.

Dale, I fully agree.

But that will not prevent the Public Health fascists from trying to make a lot of mileage out of the very social costs which you mention. Expect higher taxes on drink, even fiercer drink/driving rules and penalties, tougher drink related anti-social behaviour laws and discriminatory health insurance refunds in some countries. The third of these, and perhaps the second, have my sympathy. It is a difficult issue.