2 January 2008 by Sandy Hemphill
For 2008, I Resolve to Drink More Wine!
I’m not so good with New Year’s resolutions. I’ve made them before but I usually break them as fast as I make them. That just adds a silly degree of guilt to the trepidations I’m already feeling about facing another entire year trying to change my life from ho-hum to dazzling.
The typical resolution isn’t much fun either. It’s usually about losing weight, exercising more, saving money, being nicer, and other serious stuff like that. One slip-up and the whole year is a loss.
There’s only one New Year’s resolution I’ve ever made that I kept the entire year. I resolved to drink champagne at least once every single week. At least once!
This resolution was such a success I repeated it for many years. Somewhere along the line, though, I abandoned that resolution.
But I’m taking it up again this year. Life is short. And when it’s fun, life IS dazzling, even in what seems to others as a ho-hum setting.
With the latest news from medical laboratories telling us that wine is now a healthy beverage, I’m making this same resolution my healthy one as well as my fun one. It’s so much easier to focus on one multi-tasking resolution than a whole list of lackluster but good intentions.
I’m going to embrace the good-health inducing, immune-system boosting, wine-laced French Paradox and enjoy wine as part of a healthy lifestyle. That’s a lifestyle - not a diet or any other isolated component of living.
The French Paradox only works because it encompasses many healthy personal and social behaviors that work together in a way that the combination of them all is much more beneficial than any individual part.
You’d have to live in a cave these days to miss the abundance of news stories from all sources that tout the virtues of eating foods high in antioxidants. These mysterious nutrients are supposed to keep us young, beautiful, and healthy so we can live forever.
Wine, especially the reds, contain an uncommonly high concentration of a very potent antioxidant called resveratrol, which is produced during the fermentation process. The molecular beginnings of resveratrol are found naturally on grape skins. They become converted into resveratrol when they come in contact with yeast organisms during the fermentation process.
Since red wines get their color from extended exposure to their skins, they develop more resveratrol right along with their deeper colors. This is why reds are often said to be healthy but little mention is made of the health benefits of white wines.
You won’t find resveratrol in supplement form. Even the best efforts of modern science have failed to produce it in synthetic form in a laboratory. You just need to drink the red wine to get to it.
Resveratrol is wonderful but it isn’t the only reason wine is a healthy beverage. It contains many other antioxidants, too, and it’s low in residual sugar and is fat free. Most wine calories come in the alcohol itself but our bodies metabolize alcohol almost immediately. It just doesn’t stay with us long enough to turn into fat.
Other beneficial aspects of the French Paradox is the Mediterranean diet, low in saturated animal fats while high in olive oil, fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grain breads and pastas, fish, and seafood. And it’s enjoyed lavishly with wine.
The people of the Mediterranean region almost never snack between meals and they almost never dine alone. They don’t count calories, either.
Instead, they sit together for pleasant conversation, lingering around a communal table while they laugh together and enjoy fresh foods grown locally and harvested in season. No pre-made, packaged, or drive-through dining for them.
An active lifestyle that includes a lot more walking and other routine physical activity than the average American’s also helps to make the French Paradox promote good health.
This is really cool news, too. Some studies seem to indicate that women and older people receive more health benefits than the guys do from drinking a moderate amount of wine every day.
So, hey, girls! Join me as I resolve, for an absolutely dazzling 2008 . . . to drink more wine!