Ever heard of the French Paradox? The term describes the weird way that the French eat so much fatty food yet suffer from barely any heart disease. For a long time, scientists believed that red wine was the key to French longevity. One of wine’s ingredients is a polyphenol called resveratrol, and researchers claimed that this antioxidant fights all manner of ills, like heart disease, cancer, and inflammation.
It’s possible, however, that we overhyped this resveratrol business. Earlier in 2014, scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine published a study suggesting resveratrol isn’t all that special.
Between 1998 and 2009, researchers followed nearly 800 villagers from two Italian towns. The subjects were all 65 and over, and they all drank a moderate amount of red wine. None of the subjects lived exceptionally long lives. In fact, 268 of them died, 174 were stricken with heart disease, and 34 got cancer. We may have to look further to solve the mystery of the French Paradox.