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The tendency to drink red wine with meals has been cited as the leading possible reason for the lack of heart disease among the people of France. The grapes in red wine – and in grape juice – have high concentrations of flavonoids, which have been proven to reduce artery-narrowing blood platelet activity and introduce powerful free radical-fighting anti-oxidant protection into the bloodstream. Does anyone remember the grape diet? The same principles apply here? Independent research since those first reports on red wine’s health benefits surfaced a dozen years ago finds that alcohol in general provides a number of health benefits when drank in moderation; and beer might be the healthiest beverage of them all! As brewer/patriot Thomas Jefferson said a couple hundred years ago, “Beer, if drank in moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit, and promotes health.” Though it is a widely believed fact that a glass of wine a day is good for you, there are those in the medical field who would disagree. “The wine people have made a very impressive marketing ploy. I think it’s a snow job,” says Dr. Norman Kaplan, a hypertension specialist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “Be that as it may, most people are convinced if you are going to get any benefit, it’s going to be from red wine.” Why would this be so widely believed? The answer could be as simple as marketing. Wine representatives, in an effort to sell more of their product, would loudly boast that their product is not only worth the higher price than beer because of it’s taste, but also bbecause it is good for you. Dr. Kaplan became something of a national media star last summer when he took the lead in presenting a report on a Texas Southwestern study on the health benefits of moderate beer consumption. “It got a lot of publicity at the time,” he says. “Since that time, there have been other studies that have documented the relative benefit of beer over other types of alcohol.” Dr. Kaplan claims he has been on record for as long as 20 years trying to educate people on the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption, and growing evidence through independent research being conducted all over the world is showing that one or two beers a day might be one of the best things you can do for your body and mind (and that’s great news!). “It’s sort of like taking an aspirin to prevent strokes and heart disease,” Kaplan says. “There is a large body of evidence that small quantities of alcohol provide protection against coronary heart attack, but also there is evidence about stroke, heart failure and osteoporosis, and most recently, dementia.” But what about those who drink more than two beers a day? Are we still getting all those health benefits? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Dr. Lowell Peterson, a cardiologist at the Appleton (Wis.) Heart Institute, states, “Most everything says that two alcoholic drinks a day is sort of the therapeutic level, and anything above that … not only doesn’t it do any good as far as preventing disease, but it is detrimental because then it starts to cause problems with car accidents and other problems to your health.”