White wine 'as good as red' for the heart

An international team, led by a researcher of Indian- origin from the University of Connecticut, has carried out the study and found that white wines offer similar heart benefits to red wines.

White wine is made from the pulp of the grape and not the skin, and therefore contains no resveratrol which is there in the case of the red variety. Resveratrol plays an important role in protecting the heart.

However, lead researcher Dipak Das said: "The flesh of the grape can do the same job as the skin. We can safely say that one to two glasses of white wine everyday works exactly like red wine."

In fact, the researchers have based their findings on an analysis of the effect of white wine on laboratory rodents, the 'New Scientist' reported.

They gave some rats measured doses – equivalent to one or two glasses a day – of red or white wines, while other animals received comparable doses of polyphenols, chemicals thought to underlie the health benefits of wine.

The researchers found that the blood pressure as well as aortic blood flow plummeted less drastically as well in the rodents fed with wine.

The mitochondria from wine-drinking rodents looked to be in better shape and fewer of their cardiac cells entered apoptosis. This was the case for rats that got polyphenols too including resveratrol from red wine, and hydroxytyrosol and tyrosol from whites.

"A look at the structure of the three chemicals' offers one possible reason why. While not identical, the trio have enough similarities that they could activate some of the same cellular reactions," Das said.