Does this mean we should drink more wine?
“You can’t possibly consume enough resveratrol from food sources to reach the doses that were used in the study,” says James Hendrix, a scientist with the US charity Alzheimer’s Association. Turner estimates someone would have to drink 1000 bottles of red wine a day to even come close.
Natural supplements are problematic, too. Plants produce resveratrol in response to stress, such as a fungal infection, cold or drought, and the level of the compound in a plant can vary tremendously. The only way to guarantee the dose is with a synthesised product.
“Nature did not design resveratrol to treat Alzheimer’s disease, it designed it for some other reason that only a grape knows,” says Hendrix. But the molecule is a good starting point, he says. Chemists should be able to tweak the structure to make more of the chemical reach the brain and to reduce the dose and side effects.
Until then, it’s probably best to think of resveratrol and other dietary molecules as counteracting poor diet rather than preventing Alzheimer’s.