The media is reporting that “drinking a glass of red wine is as good for you as one hour of exercise”, and the fitness world is losing it’s collective shit.
Is this serious?
I mean, why would you go to the gym if you could achieve the same results by staying at home and declaring “Wine O’ Clock”?
The media has really gone into over-drive on this one (link, link, link, link) so I’m going to break down the study in question and see what the researchers actually discovered – but before we do that, let me put your mind at rest by reassuring you these reports are absolute fucking nonsense!
What Did The Study Actually Discover?
Back in 2012, a team of researchers from the University of Alberta, Canada, set out to discover whether a compound called resveratrol holds any potential fat burning benefits. (1)
They set up a 12-week study in which a group of rats (nope, not humans!) were divided into the following test groups:
- Group A: No exercise + No resveratrol
- Group B: No exercise + Yes resveratrol
- Group C: Yes exercise + No resveratrol
- Group D: Yes exercise + Yes resveratrol
At the end of the 12-weeks they noticed that the group who exercised and had resveratrol improved their body composition the most (see below), but that’s not what the media reported…
… yes, it took the press all of 0.1 seconds to notice that resveratrol seems to improve results, and considering this compound is found in red wine, they immediately started publishing articles telling their readers to get pissed!
This version of the Multiverse is really crazy, huh?
Anyway, the researchers did discover that resveratrol appears to give us a slight edge in terms of fat loss, but we must remember that this was not a human trial, and we must also consider that the dose used in this study would be fucking lethal to a human being.
You see, each rodent received a resveratrol dose of 322mg/kg, and when we recalculate that to the size of a human it becomes 53mg/kg.
That means a woman who weighs 59kg would need a staggering 3127mg resveratrol to achieve the same dose as the rats in this trial, and a man weighing 80kg would need a monstrous 4240mg. Considering a glass of red wine contains only 4-7mg resveratrol, the lady would need to drink anywhere between 446-781 glasses of red wine and the man would need to drink 605-1060 glasses of red wine.
Holy flaps!
So while it appears resveratrol may offer us some interesting fat loss benefits, they are nowhere near the level which can achieve via exercise and there appears to be no way to unlock them anyway without becoming a raging alcoholic, so put these nonsensical media reports straight in the fucking bin!
References:
- Dolinsky, V. W., et al. Improvements in skeletal muscle strength and cardiac function induced by resveratrol during exercise training contribute to enhanced exercise performance in rats. J Physiol (2012).