Will our children thank us for drinking red wine?

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – It is a heartening week in the research news corner, as seen from Canada. Researchers in Lausanne have measured the long-term metabolism in humans of lycopene, found in tomatoes, and coupled with recent research from the UK we now know it can do wonders for the skin.

Another group in Canada are seeing that rats given Resveratrol, the substance that has given red wine a good name in recent years, don’t pass diabetes on to the next generation.

Lycopene has long been known to have antioxidant qualities and tomatoes are one of the rare sources of it, in useful quantities. It is quickly absorbed into the skin, where it can play a useful role in protecting against ultraviolet rays, and it can still be found six weeks later, AB Ross and his team at the Nestle Research Center near Lausanne say (full story, Toronto Sun/QMI agency).

The Toronto Star also carries an article about research in Alberta that shows Resveratrol, found in red wine pigments, could be useful in fighting diabetes. The antioxydant, which came to fame in the 1980s when research showed it could help stave off cancer, has another preventive role in rats. Lab rats genetically susceptible to developing diabetes and that are fed the compound do not develop abdominal fat, which is linked to diabetes.

This still leaves a lot of questions. Do the offspring need Resveratrol frequently? Daily? A short, quick dose in infancy? And when the research moves on to humans, will we find that a glass a day keeps the diabetes away, or if we drink it regularly will our children benefit?

Meanwhile, the garden tomatoes are ripening and at least we can keep our skin looking bright and young while we ponder the impact of red wine on our health.

Cheers! Here’s to the Alberta research team carrying on with its research, and to the rest of us just carrying on carrying on with red wines while we wait for the outcome.

May our children bless us for it.

2005 figures, chart source: Addiction Info Suisse

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A major European study, published 8 April in the British Journal of Medicine, says that people who drink more than two units or “standard drinks” a day for men and more than one for women are at greater risk of developing alcohol-related cancers.

The study followed 363,988 men and women, ages 30-75, in eight countries, to assess their risk of developing cancer. It covered drinkers in Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.

A standard glass is about 125 ml, or a little over a Swiss one decilitre glass, but as defined in the article: “two drinks a day for men with about 24 g alcohol, one for women with about 12 g alcohol”.

The BBC reports that in Britain National Health Service “guidelines are a little more relaxed, saying that men should drink no more than three to four units a day while women should not go above two to three units a day.”

Switzerland carried out a survey in 2010 showing that up to 18 percent of the Swiss population may be at risk of excessive drinking. The overall figure hides changing habits, with consumption falling steadily in recent years for the population as a whole, but certain groups, notably young men 15-25 increasing consumption and switching from wine to beer and spirits, according to Addiction Info Suisse, a Lausanne-based group that earns 20 percent of its revenue from carrying out research for the Swiss government.

Higher consumption linked to four main cancers

The report’s findings show varying incidences of cancer:

“10% (95% confidence interval 7 to 13%) and 3% (1 to 5%) of the incidence of total cancer was attributable to former and current alcohol consumption in the selected European countries. For selected cancers the figures were 44% (31 to 56%) and 25% (5 to 46%) for upper aerodigestive tract, 33% (11 to 54%) and 18% (−3 to 38%) for liver, 17% (10 to 25%) and 4% (−1 to 10%) for colorectal cancer for men and women, respectively, and 5.0% (2 to 8%) for female breast cancer.”

The report is being heavily covered by British media, where the debate about  how to reduce excessive consumption of alcohol has been gathering steam in recent months: BBC, Guardian, Sky, Telegraph.

The Guardian cites one expert who suggests the figures are low, since they reflect people’s drinking habits 10 years ago and people in the UK have increased their alcohol consumption.

Discussions in Switzerland have included the value of increased wine education to help consumers better understand how to enjoy alcohol without abusing it, I wrote in GenevaLunch in 2010, in the wake of French debates over banning advertising for alcohol.