Jan

The Fat Stops Here

We already know that French Women Don’t Get Fat, despite diets high in fatty products, due in part to a healthy consumption of wine, especially with meals. This concept, though part of a recent best seller, has been known as the French Paradox for some time. The idea was simply that the alcohol in wine helps the arteries relax, thus allowing optimal blood flow. The nutrients rush in, and the waste is quickly carried out. Nothing bad sticks around.

Red wine has an added benefit, to be sure, in the form of its plant-based chemicals, most notably the polyphenols. The role of polyphenols in the plant world is one of auto-immune response mechanism: it mobilizes to destroy damage, usually in the form of foreign invaders, such as fungi or mold.

One such chemical, resveratrol, has been show to turn normal laboratory mice into super-marathon rodents in one study. In another, the polyphenolic compound helped keep extremely obese mice healthier than other fat mice not on the red wine supplement.

Finally, a research report published in the January 2008 print issue of The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal shows that the food industry should starting taking a similar approach toward reducing health risks associated with fatty foods, by adding red wine polyphenols to particularly fattening foods in an effort to offset weight gain.

These “meal additives” would be based on the following work of Israeli researchers who discovered that consuming polyphenols simultaneously with high-fat foods may reduce health risks associated with these foods.

Here’s how they came to this conclusion:

In the study, six men and four women were fed three different meals consisting of dark meat turkey cutlets. One meal, the control, consisted of turkey meat and water. The second meal consisted of turkey meat with polyphenols added after cooking (one tablespoon of concentrated wine) followed with a glass of red wine (about 7 ounces). The third meal consisted of turkey meat with polyphenols added before cooking and then followed by a glass of wine.

At various points during the study, researchers took blood and urine samples to measure levels of malondialdehyde (MDA), a natural byproduct of fat digestion known to increase the risk for heart disease and other chronic conditions. The researchers found that MDA levels nearly quintupled after the control meal, while MDA was nearly eliminated after subjects consumed the meals with polyphenols.

“As long as deep fried candy bars are on menus, scientists will need to keep serving up new ways to prevent the cellular damage caused by these very tasty treats,” said Gerald Weissmann, MD, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “This study suggests that the time will come where people can eat French fries without plugging their arteries.”

Thus explaining, scientifically, why French women don’t get fat.

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