Resveratrol: Real in a Petri Dish, Unproven in People

Summary

Resveratrol is sold as the molecule behind the "red wine is good for your heart" story and as a longevity supplement, and that human claim does not hold up — the dose in wine is trivially small, systemic bioavailability is around half a percent, human trials move surrogate markers inconsistently at best with no proven longevity or cardiovascular outcome, a large human cohort found dietary resveratrol unrelated to who lived longer, the flagship commercial program (GSK's $720M Sirtris bet) collapsed, and part of the early cardioprotection literature was retracted for fraud — yet the molecule is