Resveratrol: Fountain of Youth?

You've probably heard- from me and a ton of other nutritionists- that red wine is on the short list of things you can consume with known health properties. (Red wine is actually one of the seven ingredients in the "polymeal", a concept I discuss at length in my new book The Healthiest Meals on Earth. Executive Summary: The polymeal is a meal of seven ingredients that, if eaten regularly, could reduce heart disease by double digit percentages and could extend life an average of nine years.)

One of the major reasons red wine is considered so healthy is a compound called resveratrol, which is found in the skins of dark grapes. In every species studied- from yeast cells to fruit flies to mice- resveratrol seems to extend life. Research by Harvard Medical School Professor of Pathology David Sinclair, MD has shown that resveratrol extends the life span of mice by up to 24 percent and the life span of other animals by as much as 59%.

It's believed that resveratrol exerts its magic by turning on genes from a family of genes called the SIRT genes which are involved in longevity. (Some SIRT genes are turned on by caloric restriction, another well-known age extending strategy, albeit a difficult one to follow.) Scientists are hard at work to develop a drug which turns on the SIRT genes, which, if successful, may be the pharmaceutical equivalent of the Fountain of Youth.

But there's been some controversy (as usual). Some argue that you'd have to drink gallons of red wine to get enough resveratrol to produce the anti-aging effect (I don't buy it). Others say that the anti-aging properties of resveratrol remain just a hypothesis and more research is needed.

Now an interesting new study has illuminated more about resveratrol's benefits, and it's interesting not just because of what it tells us about resveratrol itself, but for what it tells us about the problems in "proving" the healthful effects of many compounds found in food.

Here's what happened. It's long been known that the digestion of certain foods such as red meat releases oxidating toxins, in particular one called malondialdehyde which is implicated in arteriosclerosis, cancer, diabetes and a host of other really bad diseases. Joseph Kanner, MD, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem fed one group of rats red meat and another the same meat mixed with red-wine concentrate. An hour and a half after eating, the rats were killed and their stomach contents analyzed. The wine concentrate had actually seriously reduced the formation of malondialdehyde and also cut the level of hydroperoxides, another group of agents that cause cell damage.

Kramer argued that looking for antioxidants from wine in the bloodstream was a mistake- they don't need to be there to be useful. He believes that if the polyphenols from wine arrive in the stomach at the moment when malondialdehyde and it's cousins are being released, the red wine compounds might stop these toxic materials from getting further in the body.

This underscores an important point. Sometimes you can't see the benefit of a food compound by looking at it in isolation. You have to look at how it works in the body in tandem with other foods, compounds and metabolic by-products. In the case of resveratrol (and red wine polyphenols) you have to look at the genes it turns on, the compounds it neutralizes, and .. well, the whole picture.

One good take home point from this research- the habit of eating fruit at the end of a meal is a healthy one!

Many fruits are rich in polyphenols and by treating them as dessert, these fruits arrive in the stomach at the point when meat digestion might conceivably do any potential damage, damage which appears to be seriously blunted by the polyphenols (either in red wine or fruit). When you look at it this way, it becomes clear why some studies show meat eaters to be perfectly healthy, others not so much. If your "meat eater" is someone who's only eating ballpark hot dogs and deli meats, no fiber, no fruit, no vegetables, you're going to get one set of results.
When you look at meat eaters eating grass fed meat and plenty of fruits and vegetables and red wine, it's a whole different story.