Scientist delighted wine lovers with ‘French Paradox’
SERGE RENAUD 1927-2012
Research scientist Serge Renaud became a hero of the French wine industry when he announced on American television that drinking red wine is good for the heart.
Renaud’s name was closely associated with the “French Paradox” — the observation that French people live longer than Americans and have fewer heart attacks despite the fact that they smoke more, take less exercise and enjoy delights such as Brillat-Savarin — so fatty that it is known as “triple-cream” cheese.
Renaud became an overnight celebrity in 1991 when he appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes, which was investigating why France had only a third of the American rate of cardiovascular disease, despite a diet equally rich in fat. Renaud argued that the two or three glasses of red wine most French people consumed every day with their meals was a significant reason for their better health.
The effect on American audiences was dramatic, banishing the ghosts of Prohibition and boosting consumption of red wine, which had been falling throughout the 1980s. In 1992, U.S. sales of red table wine increased by nearly 40 per cent and stayed strong over subsequent years. The program also spawned new “lifestyle” books promoting the benefits of wine consumption and even a French Paradox pill, which claimed to provide all the benefits of two glasses of red wine without the alcohol.
Renaud’s argument launched a new wave of research exploring the health benefits of wine, to which he contributed further evidence that, in addition to its protective effects on the heart, red wine also protects against most cancers.
But not every study bore out Renaud’s findings, and there is no scientific consensus about the claimed protective effects of red wine. Some British obesity experts observed that the French had only recently begun to eat as much fat as Americans had been eating for decades. It was only a matter of time, they concluded, before the new fatfilled French diet exacted its toll on Gallic arteries.
To be fair to Renaud, he also attributed the longevity of his fellow countrymen to the fact that the French eat more healthily than Americans, observing: “If you eat french fries and steak every day, with two glasses of wine, you won’t go very far.” But he remained a passionate advocate of the health benefits of red wine, inspired by his personal experience of growing up near Bordeaux: “You know instinctively that wine is good for you. My parents, all their friends, lived to 80 or 90. I knew there was some special reason.”
Serge Renaud was born on Nov. 21, 1927, at Cartelegue, in the Haute Gironne, where his grandfather had a vineyard in Entre-Deux-Mers. After studying medicine at Bordeaux University he moved to Montreal, where he took a doctorate in cardiovascular disease, and later to Boston.
In 1973, he returned to France as a director of public medical research at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Lyon.
Following his 60 Minutes interview, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms challenged Renaud to show figures to back up his claims about red wine; and in an article in The Lancet in 1992 he drew on epidemiological research and data of his own to claim that 20 to 30 grams of alcohol a day (about two to three standard glasses of wine) could reduce the risk of dying from a heart attack by 40 per cent. Wine protects the heart, he maintained, mainly by acting on platelets in the blood to prevent clotting.
Renaud went on to carry out a study of 34,000 middle-aged men living in eastern France that supported the French Paradox and showed that, as well as protecting against heart disease, moderate consumption of red wine also protects against most cancers.
He was appointed to the Legion d’honneur in 2005. In the United States, an academy of cardiologists was named in his honour.
Renaud died in late October at age 84 and is survived by a daughter.