On November 17, 1991 the CBS program "60 Minutes" broadcast a report correlating the French consumption of red wine and lower rates of heart disease in their country. The report noted that the French consumed almost 40% more grams of fat per day from animal sources, four times as much butter, 60% more cheese, and nearly 3 times more pork than Americans. Yet the rate of death from heart attacks and coronary artery disease is only about half that in the United States, and nearly twice as many people live to 100.

It was suggested that France's high red wine consumption is responsible for this counterintuitive notion, which is called the "French paradox." This broadcast sent scores of Americans running to wine stores and during the four weeks following the broadcast. A 44% increase was recorded in the sale of red wine in U.S. supermarkets!


Fast forward twelve years. By 2003, sirtuin genes were emerging as key mediators of the effects of caloric restriction, whose actions improve the metabolism of carbohydrates and fat-both excessive in the French diet. It was therefore possible that sirtuin genes might play a role in the "French paradox." But the French were not starving. How did Resveratrol and the other polyphenols in red wine work to lower cardiovascular risk in the French? Was it indeed their "antioxidant" ability? It is now generally agreed that red wines contain the polyphenols known as Resveratrol, Quercetin, catechin, and others, all of which have been shown to stimulate beneficial biological activities. These include the prevention of atherosclerosis (creating the French paradox) as well as many other diseases, as we shall see. Several papers have confirmed that polyphenols activate key enzymes, so the French paradox appeared to have been solved. Thanks to the sciences of ethnobotany and nutrigenomics, we now had the best explanation for the French paradox.