Red wine’s resveratrol not linked to healthier life

Even though red wine is a good source of resveratrol, the typical quantity of the chemical consumed in a Western diet is not associated with improvements in health, according to a new study.

Mick Stephenson mixpix/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Sipping red wine or eating chocolate or grapes to take in extra resveratrol may not help you live a longer, healthier life. While the chemical has been shown to lengthen the life span of yeast and improve health in lab animals, scientists did not find a link between resveratrol metabolites in people’s urine and inflammation, cardiovascular disease, cancer or longevity. The result suggests that the amount of resveratrol consumed with a Western diet does not have a substantial influence on human health or risk of death, the team reports May 12 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Ashley Yeager is the associate news editor at Science News. She has worked at The Scientist, the Simons Foundation, Duke University and the W.M. Keck Observatory, and was the web producer for Science News from 2013 to 2015. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT.

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