The French Paradox
The ‘French Paradox’ is the popular thinking of wine as a medicine rather than toxin. Typically, the diet of people in southern France includes a very high proportion of cheese, butter, eggs, organ meats and other fatty and cholesterol-laden foods. This diet would seem to promote heart disease, but the rate there is much lower than in America. Thus, the French Paradox.
In essence, the ‘French Paradox’ is the observation that although the French don’t eat a particularly healthy diet, they have a much lower rate of heart disease than people of other nations. This startling fact is said to be due to the relatively high consumption by the French of wine, which in some way acts to protect them from heart disease. Of course, this is just a correlation for which there is no direct proof. But it does fit well with the results from large-scale population studies on drinking and mortality.
There is still quite a bit of controversy surrounding the French Paradox. However, the idea is now so firmly entrenched in the public’s mind, and so intuitively attractive a hypothesis, that it looks likely to stay.
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