I found something really interesting that is worthy of mention-
Good news: non-alcoholic red wine contains just as much resveratrol as regular wine
So does that make non-alcoholic red wine a great idea for dietary resveratrol intake?
Bad news: the red wines used in the study below contained 4mg of resveratrol per liter.
That means you'd have to drink insane amounts of non-alcoholic wine to match the resveratrol content of some of these supplements (although, perhaps not much of the supplementary resveratrol is trans-resveratrol).
On the other hand, its encouraging that all the health benefits exhibited by the french with red wine consumption are produced by such meager amounts of resveratrol.
For the study, which was published in the April 20 issue of Heart Disease Weekly, 40 healthy male rabbits were divided into five equal groups. One group was given water and allowed to continue with their standard diet. The other four groups ate meals that contained nearly 2 percent cholesterol -- considerably high for herbivores, according to the researchers.
One of the high-cholesterol groups was given only water to drink every day. Another group drank water mixed with 3 milligrams of resveratrol for every kilogram the rabbit weighed. The remaining two groups received 4 milliliters of red wine per kilogram of weight per day; one group drank nonalcoholic wine, the other had wine with 12 percent alcohol. (The wines contained close to 4 milligrams of resveratrol per liter.)
Every day, the scientists measured the ability of arteries in the rabbits' ears and legs to dilate, as well as the rabbits' capacity to maintain proper levels of nitric oxide in the bloodstream. Both factors help "relax the vessels and make the blood flow easier," said study spokesman Joseph Wu, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at New York Medical College in Valhalla, who has collaborated with the Nanjing Medical University researchers. Having too much nitric oxide in the blood may also cause oxidative damage to the body, according to Wu. The researchers also measured the rabbits' blood pressure and the endothelium cell levels in their blood vessels.
After 12 weeks, the scientists found that the rabbits on a high-cholesterol diet that drank only water showed an approximate 25 percent decrease compared to the control rabbits in their ability to regulate both arterial dilation and nitric oxide levels. On the other hand, rabbits that drank red wine, nonalcoholic wine or the resveratrol-water mix showed similar cardiovascular health as the rabbits on a regular diet.
"The significant [cardiovascular] dysfunctions observed in high-cholesterol diet groups were effectively mitigated by oral administration of resveratrol, red wine and de-alcoholized red wine," the authors wrote.
Edited by funkodyssey, 09 February 2006 - 02:35 PM.