Drinking red wine to help prevent ageing would only be useful if someone drank more than 2,500 bottles per day, UK health officials have warned following several reports on a new research study.
A US study on mice found that a compound called resveratrol – which is commonly found in red wine and has been linked to myriad health benefits – might help to prevent muscle ageing.
But, experts at the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) were quick to jump on media reports linking red wine to the results of the study, published in the peer-reviewed Journals of Gerontology: Biological Sciences.
Resveratrol levels vary in wine, between just 0.2mg per litre to 12.6mg per litre.
‘That’s nothing like enough to get the amounts consumed in this study,’ the NHS said.
Mice in the US study were fed 400mg of resveratrol per day per kilogram of body weight.
A woman weighing 70kg would need 28g of resveratrol a day to equal the amount in the study, and a man would need even more, the NHS said.
That’s more than 2,000 litres of red wine daily, or 2,666 bottles, it said.
Researchers were looking at whether resveratrol could mirror the effects of a low calorie, high exercise diet.
‘Eating less and exercising more is certainly a better bet than trying to drink your way to agelessness,’ the NHS said.
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