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Reports that drinking red wine can help prevent heart disease and colon cancer and otherwise improve health are old news. But the results of a new study, reported on by Nicholas Wade of The New York Times among others, could induce widespread dipsomania. Reservatrol, an ingredient in red wine grapes that fights fungus and other attackers, appears to trigger chemical changes that slow the aging process; other ingredients in red wine may, too. The benefits of red wine mimic those caused by famine diets, which tell the body to put extra effort into tissue maintenance.

One French study has even found that "couch potato" mice whose training diet included reservatrol can run for twice as long on treadmills before succumbing to exhaustion. That finding raises the specter of marathon runners swilling pinot noir - at least until agencies that test for performance-enhancing drugs add reservatrol to the list.

Scientists haven't settled on how much red wine it takes to add a few years to one's life, though one University of Wisconsin researcher believes one 4- or 5-ounce glass nightly might do the trick. The news has pharmaceutical companies racing to capitalize on the phenomenon by isolating the Methuselah factor and putting it in a pill. But there are alternative sources of the miracle ingredient, if that's what reservatrol turns out to be. They're the same miracle ingredients most people ate as a kid - peanut butter and grape jelly - and the side effects of over-indulgence are a lot less painful.