Can beer be engineered into a health food? Could this be the best news in the history of mankind?
Researchers at Rice University in Houston are working on a beer that could fight cancer and heart disease. Taylor Stevenson, a member of the six-student research team at Rice, said they are using genetic engineering to create a beer that includes resveratrol, the disease-fighting chemical that’s been found in red wine. Resveratrol is also a natural component of grapes and pomegranates.
The plant-produced antibiotic is one of the main reasons behind the mysterious paradox of the health of French people; they have a diet rich in cream sauces, cheeses, and all kinds of saturated fats, and they still have lower rates of heart disease than the U.S.
The students, most of whom aren’t even legally of age to sample their creation, are in the process of developing a genetically modified strain of yeast that will ferment beer and produce resveratrol at the same time.