Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

L’Chaim

The latest news from Harvard Medical School appears to confirm something that rabbis and French chefs have been saying for centuries: Red wine is good for you.

According to a study by Harvard scientists, announced this week in the online journal Nature, red wine contains a chemical that mimics the life-extending qualities of a low-calorie diet. So far they have only tested it on yeast and a limited sample of flies and worms, but results are encouraging. Yeast cells live as much as 80% longer when fed a dose of the compound known as resveratrol. Some of the researchers are so impressed that they’ve taken to drinking a glass of red wine a day, even before they finish a current round of tests on monkeys.

The tests are based on the discovery in 1991 that reducing daily calorie intake triggers a gene — at least in mice — that’s designed to defend the body against starvation. A moderate caloric reduction, without a cutback in essential nutrients, seems to make mice live as much as 30% longer. Scientists have been searching ever since for a chemical that would stimulate the starvation gene without reducing calories. They think they’ve found it in red wine. Some of the scientists involved suspect the chemical explains why France, with its high rate of wine consumption, has a relatively long life expectancy despite its high-fat diet.

The approach of the Jewish High Holy Day season, with its concentrated series of festive toasts, libations and schmaltz-soaked meals, provides an obvious opportunity to test the findings on a willing human public.

Those who haven’t made a habit in the past of reciting Kiddush throughout the holiday season, which begins with Rosh Hashana on September 26 and ends three weeks later with Simchat Torah, are invited to take the plunge next month — in the interests of science, of course. Anyone who can still find the keyboard afterward is invited to share results with the Forward.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.