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)

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