White Wine Benefits The Heart As Red Wine
Reported October 17, 2008
A new study reveals that a glass of red wine is as beneficial for the heart as a glass of red wine. For experiment, researchers have given a tipple of Italian white wine to the rats as a part of their diet.
Researchers found that those animals suffered less heart attack damage than animals allowed only water or grain alcohol. The benefits were similar to those animals who fed red wine or its ‘wonder’ grape-skin-ingredient, resveratrol.
White wine, which is made from the pulp of grapes but not the skin, contains no resveratrol, can protect against both heart disease and cancer. Red wine and resveratrol, can be the cause of “French paradox”- low rates of heart disease despite having a lot of fat.
“The flesh of the grape can do the same job as the skin. We can safely say that one to two glasses of white wine per day works exactly like red wine,” says Dipak Das, a molecular biologist at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in Farmington.
Measured doses of red or white Italian wines were given to the lab rats, the amount they drank was equivalent to one or two glass a day. Other animals received doses of health-giving plant chemicals called “polyphenols”, found in both red and white wine.
Researchers found in their study that the animals that received red or white wine experienced less heart damage compared to those rats who fed water or straight alcohol. These lab tests suggest that white wine protects the mitochondria in heart cells, structures that act as ‘powerplants’. Damage to these structures caused by lack of nutrients and oxygen can lead cells to commit suicide.
Source : The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry