The widespread belief for centuries throughout the grape-growing areas of Europe that grapes, grape juice, and grape products generally have curative properties. It has not been a dominant belief but one of those examples of folklore in the background of all cultures, a cure in the same category as goats milk, honey, and much else. Its advocates might well point to the recent evidence that a moderate intake of wine has beneficial effects on health as validating their belief.<\/p>\n
In the early 20th century, Bernarr Macfadden (1868-1955) claimed that a grape diet would cure cancer. The publisher of a number of health magazines and author of the massive five-volume Encyclopedia of Physical Culture: a work of reference, providing complete instructions for the cure of all diseases through physcultopathy (1912), he offered a prize of $10,000 to anyone who could prove that a diet of grapes did not cure the disease. Proving a negative is notoriously difficult, and the prize remains unclaimed to the present.<\/p>\n
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The widespread belief for centuries throughout the grape-growing areas of Europe that grapes, grape juice, and grape products generally have curative properties. It has not been a dominant belief but one of those examples of folklore in the background of all cultures, a cure in the same category as goats milk, honey, and much else. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-g"],"yoast_head":"\n