Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

So some of the best remedies were always as close as the kitchen ...

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
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MU researchers consider red wine as a bacterial antidote
http://www.columbiatribune.com/2007/Oct/20071020News009.asp
By ABRAHAM MAHSHIE of the Tribune’s staff
Published Saturday, October 20, 2007

Here’s another healthy reason to drink wine: It fights food-borne
pathogens. A University of Missouri-Columbia study recently found promising
evidence that harmful bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli can be killed
with a little red wine or grape juice.

"People have been consuming wine for eons," said Azlin Mustapha, a
microbiologist in the food science program at the College of Agriculture,
Food and Natural Resources who used more than a dozen commercial wines in
the research. "Even before we understood what it did, people were already
using it for medicinal effects."

Anecdotal evidence and red wine’s known cardiovascular impact as well as
its potential for lowering cholesterol and as an anti-carcinogen led
Mustapha and doctoral student Atreyee Das to explore whether red wine could
kill pathogens while allowing protobodies - "good" bacteria - to live.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that food-borne
diseases affect 76 million Americans each year and result in 5,000 deaths.
"What we’re seeing now already is very promising," Mustapha said,
explaining that when pathogens are introduced to a test tube containing
certain red wines, pathogens are killed.

"Sixty percent" concentration "wine is enough to kill bacteria," said Das,
26, who began the research as her doctoral work in the winter semester.
"We’re trying to delve in deeper," she added, noting that additional
pathogens will be tested. Das and Mustapha said animal tests will be
conducted next, a necessary step toward learning whether the wines have a
similar effect in humans.

Mustapha said that merlot, cabernet, pinot noir and shiraz varieties worked
best, with no differentiation between brands or domestic and imported
wines.

White wines and grape juice were also tested but had no effect, indicating
that that something present in the grapes’ skin, which produces the red
color, fights off the bacteria. Although results of the experiment are
promising, Mustapha warns this is no reason to head to a local vineyard on
a daily basis.

"I would not recommend that people go out and consume wine in excess," she
said, noting that it is not known whether drinking wine before exposure to
pathogens or after the fact would be most effective.

The researchers estimate they have two or three more years of research on
the subject. Mustapha said research like this might be used to produce a
novel wine containing protobodies.