You Ask, I Answer: (More) Wine

What is the deal with tannins in red wine? Are they healthy?

-- Jane Shou
Brooklyn, New York

Tannins are bitter compounds found in tree bark, tea, cheese, nuts, berries and grapes (and, thus, in wine)

You've had them, believe me. Remember the time you took a sip of red wine or bit into an unripened blueberry that just made your mouth pucker? Well, tannins are plant's shields. They taste bitter to animals (that includes us) and prevent fungi and bacteria from attacking.

Going back to the blueberry example – tannins disappear from fruit once it's ripened (nature's ingenious way of keeping animals from eating certain growing crops).

If not handled properly during the winemaking process, tannins can turn a potentially delicious bottle of wine into a bitter mess. That being said, all wines contain them, since they are responsible for their color and, to a certain extent, texture.

They also happen to bring along some nifty antioxidant properties! For instante, catechin (found in tea) is a tannin that helps increase our good cholesterol while lowering the bad.

A 2006 study by Queen Mary's School of Medicine in London concluded that tannins in wine known as procyanidins help our cardiovascular systems by minimizing the damage certain enzymes do to our arteries.

Some people understandably steer clear of these compounds. Turns out tannin decreases our levels of a neurotransmitter known as serotonin, which consequently triggers migraines in a small percentage of the population.

Unless you regularly suffer from migraines, I would not be concerned with the consumption of tannins. Since they are naturally found in foods that have been consumed for thousands of years by millions of people, I wouldn't give them a second thought.

Instead, we should be more concerned with how some candies can drastically change colors ten seconds after being chewed.