What's your pleasure? Wine? Or Pepto-Bismol? Since returning two weeks ago from some fascinating times in sundry climes -- 60 days worth -- I've been particularly mindful of human health, not least my own. Travel can be tiring, and lower physical resistance. This airport, that airport. This station, that station. Trains, buses, catamarans, taxis -- all with luggage to pull, lift, shove, and store. Up the stairs, down the stairs. Taxi! And so on.
Travel can take a lot out of you, and it's good to know that wine drunk in moderation can put a little something back in.
I'm not being altogether facetious about my "wine or Pepto-Bismol" alternatives. In a clinical study conducted in 1995 in the United States researchers concluded that bacteria such as E. coli, salmonella and shigella were destroyed more readily by red and white wine than by Pepto-Bismol. How so? Alcohol drunk in moderation, it seems, might lower food poisoning risk by stimulating the stomach's acid secretion.