We’ve all heard the “red wine is good for you” argument before, but let’s face it; not everyone would choose a glass of red wine over a nice, cold beer. I wouldn’t, at least. Anyway, the actual benefit of drinking red wine comes from a cancer-fighting chemical called resveratrol, which occurs naturally in grapes.
The problem with the red wine argument is that you’d have to consume about a half a bottle each day to get the beneficial effects of the chemical. If only someone could figure out how to add a more potent blend to delicious, nutritious beer…
Six students at Rice University in Houston have figured out a way to add a genetically engineered version of resveratrol to beer. To beer! I’ll concede that this idea totally trumps the idea that my friends and I came up with in college of somehow adding smoking to beer. You’d basically take a sip and then exhale smoke. We ran into problems figuring out how to keep a cigarette lit while inside a liquid-filled can.
What I’m trying to say is that the Rice University beer is a much better, healthier idea. It’s basically the complete opposite of what we were trying to accomplish. The team is getting help from Saint Arnold Brewing Company in Houston to develop a resveratrol-infused yeast and expects that, within about five years, beer companies everywhere would be able to purchase the odorless, tasteless chemical to add to their own brews.
[via Computerworld]
