They don't diet and they don't spend hours grunting and groaning in the gym. So how can French women put away as much ice-cream, rich pastries and fancy cheeses as they want and yet stay so slim?

For much of the past decade, American and British scientists have been annoyed by the phenomenon known as the French Paradox. Nutritionally speaking, the French have been getting away with murder: They eat all the butter, cream, foie gras, pastry and cheese that their hearts desire, consume three times as much saturated animal fat as Americans do and yet they have comparatively low rates of stomach and colon cancer and one of the lowest incidence of heart disease in the world. It's maddening.

It has been suggested that France's high red wine consumption is a primary factor in the trend. This theory was expounded in a 60 Minutes broadcast in 1992. The program began a large increase in North American demand for red wines from around the world.

Researchers in Denmark recently looked at 25,000 people and discovered that wine drinkers slash their overall risk of dying from any cause by about 40%. It is believed that a variety of compounds found in red wine contribute to the reported benefits. Many of these compounds are known to be powerful anti-oxidants.