Alt+Wine

A big day for the hedonists.

A recent study covered here by Jacob Gaffney at Wine Spectator just discovered that resveratrol, a polyphenol found in red wines, can dramatically help to rebuild lung cells damaged by cigarette smoking.

This means that while resveratrol doesn’t prevent damage caused by smoking and other lung pollutants, it does help to clean up after them. This clean-up act could lower cancer rates and increase overall lung health in smokers.

While the scientists DO say this will help smokers combat the terrible damage done while smoking, they DON’T recommend red wine as an alternative to not smoking at all. Shocker.

Personally, I would rather selectively read this for the parts that I like. When I do that, this is how it goes in my head:

“If you smoke a cigarette, you pretty much have to have a glass of wine. Otherwise you’re being irresponsible with your health.”

This makes me more happy than the much more obvious and actually true alternative which goes like this:

“Those things will kill you.”