It’s already been established that red wine is healthy.

But a new study says that white wine is just as good for you.

Rats given a tipple of Italian white wine with their meals suffered less heart attack damage than animals allowed only water or raw grain alcohol.

The benefits were similar to those seen in animals fed red wine, or its “wonder” grape-skin ingredient, resveratrol.

Red wine, and resveratrol, have often been cited as the cause of the “French paradox” – the fact that French people have low rates of heart disease despite eating a lot of fat.

However, white wine, made from the pulp of grapes but not the skin, contains no resveratrol. Lab tests suggested that white wine protected the mitochondria in heart cells, the rod-shaped cell structures that act as energy-generating “powerplants”.

Molecular biologist Dipak Das, from the University of Connecticut in Farmington, US, said: “The flesh of the grape can do the same job as the skin.

Dipak Das, from University of Connecticut, US, said: “We can safely say that one to two glasses of white wine per day works exactly like red wine.”

He added that evidence may yet emerge of an “English paradox” because beer was also “cardioprotective”.

Via news.sky.comj