By Linda Eckhardt:
A German Science team who found that the antioxidant, resveratrol, the active ingredient in red wine already known to keep your heart healthy and to ward off cancer also turned out to be a fat fighter was good news at the Endocrine Society’s 90th Annual meeting in San Francisco.
In the laboratory, exposure to resveratrol prevented pre-fat cells, termed pre-adipocytes, from increasing and from converting into mature fat cells, according to Martin Wabitsch, MD, PhD, a researcher from the University of Ulm in Ulm, Germany.
OK. So the research in the lab was done on mice, it’s a start, isn’t it? The really great news was that by feeding lab mice red wine, the mice could eat a high calorie diet and not get fat, Perhaps a lovely lunch of Pinot Noir and Triple Cream Cheese, perhaps served under the elm in the garden?
Well, the French have known this for a long time haven’t they, and without having to lock up a bunch of white mice in a lab and feeding them red wine and pate. They call it the French Paradox, which has been noted for about 20 years as a mystery in the U.S. health and food press.
During our great long nutrition debacle wherein Americans were assured that if they ate a low fat diet, took lots of pills and read every scientific study sponsored by big Pharma they would live forever, the French simply sat back, drank red wine, ate triple cream cheeses and fatty meats and won the epidemiological statistics contests for health.
Despite their evil, non-puritanical ways, The French, and those lab mice were just plain healthier than the ever less healthy Americans choking down egg white omelets, horse-food cereals and prescription drugs by the truck load.
Dr. Wabitsch and his team exposed some fat cells to resveratrol and did not expose a comparison group of fat cells to the antioxidant. “Forty hours is the normal doubling time [of pre-fat cells],” Wabitsch says. “At 48 hours, the pre-fat cells in the control dish had more than doubled. In the resveratrol dish, the number of pre-fat cells had decreased by 40% to 45%,”
The volume of fat cells exposed to the resveratrol was also less, he says, in effect producing skinnier fat cells. Exposure to the resveratrol also reduced the secretion of substances called interleukin 6 and 8, which may be linked to the development of diabetes and clogged arteries, both thought to be obesity-related problems.
The Wabitsch study was partly funded by the German Research Association and the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts in Germany.
What does this mean for you, safely scudding through on your own Silver Cloud? It means you should have a glass or two of Pinot Noir with that steak for dinner, or pate for lunch.
If the mice and the French agree, how could you go wrong?
