What is the “French Pardox?”
According to a paper posted on the NCBI, National Center for Biotechnology Information, the “French Paradox” is “a term that was generated in 1992 based on epidemiological data from French people who had a low incidence of coronary heart diseases (CHD) despite the consumption of a diet in high saturated fat.”
Ultimately in many of the studies related to the “French Paradox” red wine is credited with many of the health benefits seen, including coronary heart diseases. In fact everything from preventing tooth decay to cancer prevention has been attributed to red wine according to yahoo.
This lead researchers to try and identify what it is about red wines that could provide these benefits. Ultimately “many compounds have been identified to be specifically abundant in red wine.” Among these “red wine appears to be the richest source of resveratrol through the skins, seeds, and stems of the grapes that are used.” It should be noted that red grapes are not the only source for resveratrol “it is also present in peanuts, soy beans, and pomegranates in high concentrations.”
Of particular importance is that in red grapes it is only produced it in response to a FUNGAL infection during their growth. “In particular Botrytis cinerea infection in grapes leads to the exclusive synthesis of resveratrol in the leaf epidermis and grape skins. Since grape skins are not fermented during white wine production, only red wines contain noticeable amounts of resveratrol.”
This is of importance because it is common practice for grape producers to treat their crops with fungicides. So in theory organic grapes should have more resveratrol because they’re not sprayed with antifungals.
Food for thought…..
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