Resveratrol

Resveratrol has long been known as the powerful antioxidant compound that is found in red wine. Now, some researchers are attempting to use the compound in beer. At Rice University, researchers are creating “BioBeer”, which they have added resveratrol into to provide a wide range of health benefits, ranging from reduction in cardiovascular diseases and increased cancer prevention to life extension and more.

The potential benefits of resveratrol are highly researched, and they are believed to be the root of the French Paradox, while providing a slew of other healthy benefits as well. While resveratrol has been pegged at eliminating all kinds of dangerous diseases, one in particular is being singled out as potentially “curable” via resveratrol.

This is mesothelioma, a deadly, aggressive cancer that actually develops in the human body for years. If you know through your family’s medical history that you are more likely to develop mesothelioma, or breast cancer for example, you can begin taking resveratrol products in order to help stave them off.

Of course, many people already take supplements containing the compound, and many people drink wine to get their resveratrol. So why not drink beer to get some resveratrol into your body as well?

At first the idea was a joke between students, however it quickly became a viable and promising idea once the students got serious. Students Peter Nguyen and Thomas-Segall-Shapiro from Rice University were the innovators behind this product and they are now ready to present their ideas to a conference.

So how can you go about including resveratrol in beer? Yeast is required in all beer for the fermentation process, without yeast, there is no beer. So they have been working on genetically modifying yeast to include genes from resveratrol, and other similar genetical markers and segments.

There is an infinite array of stains of yeast that are used in beer, however there is only one genetically modified strain that is approved for usage. So the team at Rice University has been developing their own, as mentioned. The goal is to get the yeast to ferment the beer, and produce resveratrol as somewhat of a byproduct at the same time.

Is “BioBeer” ready to hit the shelves of your local beer store? No, for one thing, the idea is still very much in the experimentation stage. The team has also not exactly been focusing on high quality, great tasting beer at this earl level of development.

But early results show that it is possible. More importantly, it’s another potential application for resveratrol, the health benefits of which are becoming clearer each and every day. The fight to bring resveratrol to the masses and prove its effectiveness in a wide range of applications is clearly well underway. Even in ways nobody would have thought of before. Cheers to you, BioBeer.