Resveratrol: The French Paradox
I love this cartoon from Chip Bok:
Interesting article on the Science Daily website: Researchers at the Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging have found that a natural substance in red wine, known as resveratrol, reduces the negative effects of a high-calorie diet in mice and extends their lifespan. Resveratrol is found in the skin of grapes and in red wine. For humans relatively high doses of resveratrol would be needed. In other words you probably would have to drink copious amounts of red wine daily. No doubt our vignerons here would love this. But researchers hope to develop orally taken drugs for humans in order to avoid the negative consequences of excess caloric and alcohol intake.
Is resveratrol the explanation for the longevity of people in the Provence? If you look at the obituary notices pasted on the window of our boulangerie around the corner, you find that many people here seem to reach the mid to high nineties. Supposedly the Provençal diet, rich in vegetables, olive oil and low on red meat and the daily glass or two of red wine does the trick. I think the sedate lifestyle, especially in the Provence countryside, is another contributing factor.
For those of you who have not yet visited France: The boulangerie is the most efficient news exchange - everybody goes there at least once a day. La Femme du Boulanger is a valuable trove of neighborhood gossip, an essential part of French social life. Notices of upcoming local theatre events, hunting parties, discos, lost cats, sofas for sale and obituaries are normally pasted on the boulangerie's window. By the way La Femme du Boulanger (The Baker's Wife) is the title of a famous film by Marcel Pagnol. It was shot in 1938 in Castellet, a village near Bandol (between Marseilles and Toulon).
