By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

The Holiday Season is upon us. And a lot of us use this as yet another good excuse to indulge, or perhaps overindulge, or, to apply my favorite maxim: moderation in all things. Including moderation.

For health reasons alone (and I feel so very righteous writing this!) I have one glass of wine every evening for dinner (OK, OK, sometimes two on weekends and, well, Holidays). The French have been doing this since they were, well, French, and they are way healthier than we are, even with all that horrible national health insurance they're stuck with.

The French eat the fattiest foods south of Nome, and are no worse for the wear. Their average cholesterol levels are about half ours, likewise heart disease, not to mention their average body fat. The reason why, as many of us (and all of them) have known for some time, is red wine. Researchers pondered this miracle for decades, this so called “French Paradox,” and finally isolated the cause of all this rampant good health: a naturally occurring (at least in red wine) chemical compound called “resveratrol” (I keep wanting to call it “reservatrol”). This substance is “a phytoalexin produced naturally by several plants when under attack by pathogens such as bacteria or fungi. Resveratrol has also been produced by chemical synthesis and is sold as a nutritional supplement derived primarily from Japanese knotweed. (Also) Resveratrol is found in the skin of red grapes and is a constituent of red wine, but apparently not in sufficient amounts to explain the French paradox. Experiments have shown that resveratrol treatment extended the life of fruit flies, nematode worms and short-lived fish but it did not increase the life span of mice.”

So says Wikipedia. But as usual, the French beg to differ, perhaps not being mice, and also as usual, seem to be enjoying themselves immensely in doing so.

Which brings me to this week's actual consumer-related subject, and latest justification for drinking red wine (or, in a pinch, white wine and taking a resveratrol capsule). I've been blogging about new ways to recycle consumer-generated waste recently, and just came across the best one yet: recycling winery waste, into hydrogen fuel, no less! According to MSNBC, a winery in Napa Valley (Oakville, CA) called, appropriately enough I suppose, the Napa Wine Company (makers of such boutique labels as Oakville, Napa, Blackbird, and Crocker and Starr), has found a way to recycle waste water from their grape processing plants through a refrigeration unit that actually feeds the waste matter to a colony of lurking microbes—those little devils—who chow down, chaw it up, and spit out hydrogen. At this stage it's just at the experimental level, but the winery expects, before long, to produce enough of their own hydrogen fuel to power the winery, as well as vineyard farming machinery. At the moment it's kind of a wash: the winery is mainly using the energy thus far produced to complete the wastewater treatment itself. But then this water, too, is recycled into the vineyards, thus eliminating the middleman (per that old beer joke, those of you old enough to remember it).

So, Happy Holidays. And relax a little, over a nice glass of Napa. It's good for your health, not to mention enjoyment. Before long it will also be good for the environment.

Cheers!

Sources:

Wikipedia.com

Winery waste makes fuel: Electricity, bacteria break organics in wastewater into hydrogen gas, Charles Q. Choi, msnbc.com, 11/3/09.

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His latest book is A Billion to One: An American Insider in the New China. He can be found at: www.geneayres.org.