We teamed up with Prof Ian Megson from the Division of Biomedical Sciences at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Inverness. We recruited a group of healthy volunteers aged between 50 and 65, with a BMI of between 25 and 30 and no history of cardiovascular disease or diabetes. On four separate occasions they ate an unhealthy meal and each time they were randomly assigned a different drink: red wine, orange juice, green tea or water as a control. We measured the antioxidant potential of each of these drinks and found that wine had three times the amount of antioxidant capacity as orange juice or green tea. Water had none
We took blood samples before our volunteers ate, and again two hours after, to measure a particular form of cholesterol influenced by free radicals called oxidised cholesterol (ox-LDL). This is involved in the build-up of fat in our blood vessels that can lead to blockages. We also measured the flexibility of the volunteers’ blood vessels using a technique called flow mediated dilation – FMD.