Skip to main content

Something new to chew on: Resveratrol chewing gum

My what a long way we have come since I first started lecturing and writing about wine and health a decade ago. For one, few had heard of resveratrol, the potent antioxidant in red wine, and many of those who had didn’t know how to pronounce it. Flash forward a few years and a few thousand research articles and now resveratrol is the flavor of the month, appearing in everything from diet pills to energy drinks. The discovery that it may activate the enzymes responsible for enhanced longevity normally associated with caloric deprivation catapulted resveratrol into the spotlight. Ads unabashedly tout it as the new fountain of youth. The latest version is a chewing gum, from a company called Gumlink A/S.


A few cautionary notes here, but there are also some good reasons why it might not be such a bad idea. Firstly, resveratrol hasn’t been able to explain all of the benefits associated with moderate wine consumption, and serious doubts have been advanced about whether it is truly capable of activating the longevity effect seen in lab experiments. So a healthy measure of skepticism is advised about any product, with or without resveratrol, that claims to deliver all the benefits of wine. But resveratrol is a remarkable molecule with many potentially useful capabilities for anti-aging. Several clinical trials are ongoing, though few have been completed.

So supplementation with resveratrol might not be a bad idea, we just don’t know enough to say for sure. One big problem with supplements is that resveratrol is poorly absorbed from the digestive tract, so most of it may be wasted. But research has shown that it is absorbed better from the lining of the mouth (oral mucosa) and I have speculated that wine drinkers who savor and swirl might be taking advantage of this without even trying. Another interesting line of research points to benefits of resveratrol in dental health. So assuming the resveratrol gum is sugar-free it just might be the ticket. Especially if it helps whiten those purple teeth from wine drinking.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Which came first: Beer or wine? (or something else?)

Actually neither beer nor wine was the first fermented beverage, and wine arguably has a closer connection to health, but recent evidence indicates that humans developed the ability to metabolize alcohol long before we were even human. The uniquely human ability to handle alcohol comes from the digestive enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, or ADH4. A new science called paleogenetics identifies the emergence of the modern version of the ADH4 gene in our ape ancestors some 10 million years ago. Interestingly, this corresponds to the time when our arboreal forebears transitioned to a nomadic lifestyle on the ground. We went from swinging from tree limbs to walking upright, and the rest is history. Understanding the circumstances that led to perpetuation of the ADH4 mutation may contain clues to what made us human in the first place. How the ability to metabolize alcohol made us human Paleogenetecist Matthew Carrigan has an idea about how this happened . Arboreal species rely on fruit tha

Wine, Charity, and Thanksgiving

Last month’s Wine Bloggers Conference in Walla Walla coincided with a charitable event called the Walla Walla Wine Walk Weekend, and it got me thinking again about the role that wineries play in charity and gratitude. I enjoyed all of the sessions at the WBC (now renamed the Wine Media Conference), but decided to a bit of a different tack and check out the charity auction event instead of the Friday evening WBC winery dinners. (Plus they had dancing!) My wife and I helped kick off the weekend’s festivities, which ended up raising over $40,000 for the Walla Walla Alliance for Homelessness. On Saturday wine blogger conference participants were joined by over 300 people at tasting rooms around downtown, sampling wines from 17 participating wineries all donating to the cause. But Walla Walla wineries aren’t unique in their generosity; with their participation and others across Washington State, this year’s Auction of Washington Wines in August raised more than $4 million to benefit Sea