X-Message-Number: 11876 From: "Thomas Nord" <> Subject: Wine? Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 03:17:20 +0100 LONDON, 28 May (AFP) - British research has found no evidence that drinking red wine provides any particular protection against heart disease, two scientists said in Friday's number of the British Medical Journal. The findings will surprise some in Britain where the mortality rate from cardio-vascular diseases is four times that in neighbouring France, where smoking and eating very fatty foods, as well as wine-drinking, are more heavily practised. More and more reports have claimed that drinking red wine was the French secret, cutting down cholesterol levels. Two researchers from the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London now claim that there is nothing but a coincidental connection between wine drinking and a lessened incidence of heart disease. According to Dr Malcolm Law and Professor Nicholas Wald, the truth is that consumption of saturated animal fats was much higher in Britain than in France for decades. The French only "caught up" with their British neighbours in the 1970s and 1980s which would explain the current lower rate of thrombosis deaths, the scientists said. "Countries with high wine consumption are those in which saturated fat consumption used to be low, but increased in recent years (France, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, for example)" said the experts. "The low mortality from ischaemic heart disease reflects the earlier low levels of saturated fat consumption, for which wine is simply an indirect marker," the researchers wrote in the British Medical Journal. They added that another factor could make the difference: Some illnesses considered to be cardio-vascular in Britian are not counted as such in France. Mvh/Sincerely Thomas Nord Stockholm (Sweden) PR: Would You like a better chance to live again? Read and be serious over this page: http://homepages.go.com/~cryonics1/index.html Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11876