Corder Book Justifies Red Wine for Health, But…

`The Red Wine Diet' by the English scientist Roger Corder has been now released. The author insists that drinking red wine regularly is good for many diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and dementia, discloses the Review in Bloomberg.com

This is in sharp contrast to another book published 50 years ago. `The Drinking Man's Diet: How to Lose Weight With a Minimum of Willpower'' contended that a good weight-loss program should include a regular two-martini lunch with steak and Béarnaise sauce. The book sold 2.4 million copies in 13 languages.

The Red Wine Diet is an extension of a 2006 article in Nature magazine by the 51 year old English scientist, a cardiovascular expert and professor of therapeutics at London's William Harvey Research Institute. He had identified procyanidin, a ``vasoactive polyphenol,'' as the chemical in wine grapes that helps reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and overall mortality.

In that article and his new book, he dismisses earlier studies that suggested a different polyphenol, resveratrol, is responsible for the so-called French Paradox, by which the French can consume large amounts of fat and wine yet have lower rates of heart disease and live longer than Americans.

Corder insists there is so little resveratrol in wine that you would have to drink hundreds of liters per day to get any benefit, while half-bottle (375 mL) a day gives you all the procyanidins you need for the same effect. That's about three glasses, though two will do the trick for women.

Tannat Grape

Many of his findings come from a research trip to Sardinia in 2002 to find out why the natives of that Mediterranean island had the highest proportion of centenarians in Europe. He found they drank big, highly tannic wines, whose Tannat grape was shown to have the highest concentration of procyanidin of any wine in the world.

He also reports on two small northern Italian villages, Crevalcore and Montegiorgio, where 97 percent of the men drink wine only, mostly red.

Corder notes that tannins derived from aging in oak barrels do nothing to improve health, and he contends that as wines age procyanidins decrease in the bottle, but not significantly until 10 years or older.

Despite the arcane chemistry of the subject, Corder manages to make sense of why we should all be drinking wine on a daily basis -- not binging -- while never cutting out good foods. Indeed, without a healthy diet, no amount of procyanidin will improve your medical prospects.

He also discusses which wines, like Tannat, are the most beneficial and even recommends specific bottlings including Malbec Riserva from Argentina and French wines made with Tannat grapes in Madiran. He also suggests wines from California and Washington State.

Corder's book is a much-needed and comprehensive update of the research on a subject not treated in depth since ``To Your Health: Two Physicians Explore the Health Benefits of Wine'' by David M. Whitten and Martin R. Lipp, 13 years ago, says the reviewer.
For a confirmed wine drinker, ``The Red Wine Diet'' is an easy book to love.. If Corder had his way, he would print wine's health benefits right on the label.

``I see no reason why in the future it should not be a legal requirement to include a statement of procyanidin content,'' he writes. ``I predict that sooner or later we will be told exactly which healthful benefits we can expect from a glass of wine.''

Delwine had already previewed the book on August 21 where we had suggested that the Tannat from Uruguay would also be a healthy wine to drink since they are still into traditonal methods without too much oak. Argentina, Peru and the US are other countries which are making wines with Tannat.

For our earlier report titled- Study identifies red wine grapes, please visit
http://www.indianwineacademy.com


 

 

 

 
 
 
 

 
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