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I think we’ve all heard these claims from somewhere or another – a square of dark chocolate is good for your health, drink green tea instead of coffee, or a glass of wine a day is good for your heart. These are just some of the things that have an antioxidant abundant compound called resveratrol. So if I eat just a bit of resveratrol-rich food, I’ll be getting antioxidants? I want to believe these claims – I certainly want an excuse to eat chocolate every day – but how are we actually seeing results from eating and drinking such small amounts?

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To know if a simple glass of this or a bite of that is impactful, we have to understand the meaning of therapeutic dose. Therapeutic dose is the term used to define the dose (or amount) needed to see a change in a disease or a deficiency. Again this definition is a little formal when you read it, but understanding the meaning of therapeutic dose is crucial for knowing how much you should eat because – just like medicine – food has therapeutic effects on health.

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Magazine and website articles like to cite the benefits of one square of chocolate or one glass of wine as the daily therapeutic dose of resveratrol, which is known to lower blood pressure, reduce joint pain, and decrease risks for diabetes. Even though these foods and drinks are rich in resveratrol, the reality of the claims is quite different. In a 2016 medical paper, the researchers demonstrated the difficulty of getting enough resveratrol from food and drinks, in other words, no normal human could acquire therapeutic doses of resveratrol.

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To get therapeutic effects from chocolate, you’d have to consume 22,046 pounds, and you’d have to consume 3,000 liters of wine. It’s simply not possible to consume resveratrol-rich foods and drinks to ingest 1 gram of resveratrol a day. What gives?

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Those numbers are absurdly high, I don’t think we have the stomachs nor the wallets to support such chocolate consumption! Even if we can’t get the benefits of resveratrol from resveratrol-rich foods, it doesn’t mean it’s a waste of effort. You might not get the needed doses of resveratrol, but swapping out your favorite bag of chips for a resveratrol-rich food like grapes, apples, or peanuts, is still good for your health.