Jenny Risher (wine); Foodpix/Jupiterimages
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Red Wine and Chocolate: The Reality
By Donna Jackson Nakazawa, September & October 2006
A glass of red wine and a little dark chocolate and you’ll live forever—that’s what the media would have us believe. But should we? The answer is not really—though these foods in moderation do have powerful health benefits
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Chocolate contains flavonoids, particularly potent antioxidants that possess “a very good ability to clear free radicals and protect against inflammation, which helps in protecting your heart,” says diet and aging researcher Paula Bickford, Ph.D. Indeed, one study found that people who ate 1.6 ounces of dark chocolate a day (about four squares, or 220 calories’ worth) for two weeks gained strong antioxidant benefits. Of course, you’d have to cut something else out of your diet—or run two to three miles a day—to justify those extra calories. Instead, Bickford recommends adding a teaspoon of plain cocoa powder (which has fewer calories and no sugar) to chili or other Southwestern recipes. Or treat yourself to one square of dark chocolate a day—60 percent or 70 percent cocoa is ideal because it has less sugar and higher levels of flavonoids than chocolate with lower levels of cocoa.
Red wine contains an abundance of the antioxidant resveratrol, which naturally stimulates the sirtuins—genes that help mop up free radicals, stabilize blood glucose levels, and otherwise make our cells healthier. To produce significant life-extending effects, though, you would probably need to drink 5 to 15 glasses of red wine a day. Long before you’d benefit from cellular rejuvenation, you’d be facing liver and other organ damage. That’s why few longevity scientists recommend drinking more than one or two glasses of red wine a day. (Studies also have found that drinking a modest amount of red wine has other benefits than those obtained by its resveratrol content.) “Better to get your antioxidants from a range of healthy sources than to overindulge in any one of them,” says Bickford. One thing to look for in the future: some wineries are starting to add resveratrol content to their labels. While some wines contain 3 to 4 micromolar of resveratrol (a micromolar is a way to measure the concentration of any compound in a liquid), others may have as much as 46 micromolar. As labeling resveratrol grows more popular, higher amounts, says Bickford, would be something to look for when browsing at your local wine shop.
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