Wine, Dessert

The Cretans ate frugally; they ate fish but virtually no meat (just the occasional goat's meat, as beef was nonexistent); they ate plenty of plant food, notably a salad-green called purslane; and they consumed very little dairy, pastries, or sugars. Unlike the Okinawans, they ate bread— a rough-ground, whole-wheat variety— and they had a moderate fat consumption through the sparing use of olive oil in the kitchen. They also had an extraordinary custom: For the Cretan, traditional breakfast often consisted of a small amount of olive oil downed in one gulp, and that was it until lunch time. Wine was also commonly drunk, but in moderation.

We know that there are many active compounds in the foods we eat, particularly fruits and vegetables. We are familiar with the "classic" micronutrients that have been identified over the past 100 years: vitamins A, B, C, and so on, and minerals like iron, selenium, zinc, and iodine. However, we now know that there are thousands of other micronutrient compounds that play a part in the smooth functioning of the body. In this book, we call them "background" micronutrients. For example, there is the family of carotenoids, of which there are over 600. They give the color to carrots, oranges, tomatoes, and melons. There is the phenol family with over 5,000 members. They too are present in all fruits and vegetables, and strongly present in tea, coffee, and wine. And there are the 7,000 terpene compounds, which are omnipresent in all plant foods, particularly in spices and aromatic herbs. We must not forget the thousands of bioflavonoids, yet another vast range of compounds that are essential to health.

It is an interesting thought that in ancient times, no one had a means of boiling water. It was not until the invention of kiln-fired pottery in Egypt around 6000 B.C.76 Deadly Harvest that water could be heated and infused with herbs to give it flavor. Within a heartbeat of learning how to make pots, these inventive people also discovered how to ferment beverages to make forms of beer and wine. In short order, most civilizations adopted, or discovered for themselves, local variations on these basic beverages.

Professor Serge Renaud dug deeper and found that there were strong regional differences. In Toulouse, in the southwest of France, a Mediterranean-type diet was practised. While not consuming much olive oil, the Toulousains did use duck and goose fat rather than butter. He found that they drank red wine copiously— up to one bottle per person per day (it is the Bordeaux region after all). In contrast, in the northern city of Strasbourg, on the border with Germany, the diet is more "Anglo-Saxon": the population drank much more milk, used butter for everything, and drank beer rather than wine.

Sulfur, in many forms, is found everyw here in processed food— in packaged salads, jams, hamburgers, sausages, instant soup, beer, and wine. People who eat a lot of processed foods not only promote sulfur bacteria in their gut, they also raise their sensitivity to allergic reactions.

Beer is brewed using the sugars from malted barley, so there is a percentage of the highly glycemic sugar, maltose. There is usually about 4 grams per 100 ml, which translates to about 3 teaspoons of sugar per 12 ounce can. Beer is in itself a "bad" carbohydrate with a high glycemic index. That is why big beer drinkers tend to suffer from the various sugar diseases— and put on a beer belly— when wine drinkers do not.

Dry wine, such as Bordeaux, is not glycemic. In particular, red wine contains a number of antioxidants like tannins and resveratrol. Dr. Serge Renaud, after numerous studies and analyses, came to the conclusion that it was these antioxidants in red wine that preserved the Toulousains from heart disease. So, this is perhaps the final element in explaining the French Paradox.

For Osteoprosis, Moderate consumption of alcohol, such as one glass of wine per day, is innocuous and can even be modestly helpful.