Nine out of ten French wines contain pesticides or fungicides

Nine out of every ten French wines contain pesticides and fungicide chemicals, a new study by a French quality control laboratory has found.

Bordeaux-based Excell Laboratory, which tested more than 300 French wines, found that 90 percent of the wines contained some pesticide, although all wines tested below the legal limits for the substances, the International Business Times reported.

The lab was opened by Frenchman Pascal Chatonnet, a wine enthusiast and vineyard operator, specifically to measure the quality and purity of wine.

"Even though the individual molecules were below threshold levels of toxicity," Chatonnet told Decanter.com, "there is a worrying lack of research into the accumulation effect, and how the molecules interact with each other."

Moreover, vineyard workers exposed to pesticides and fungicides are more likely to get brain cancer, Parkinson's disease and other diseases.

On the other hand, drinking wine with your meal as part of a balanced Mediterranean diet could prevent you from having a heart attack, a study has found.

The nearly five-year study, published Monday by The New England Journal of Medicine and profiled by The New York Times, found that high-risk participants in the randomized trial were 30 percent less likley to develop the most serious consequences of heart disease — heart attacks, strokes and death — if they ate a Mediterranean diet.

The study was the first to find any compelling evidence that a Mediterranean diet can reduce the risks of heart disease. Experts have previously been skeptical that the effects of a diet could be measured reliably, especially because many people already take medications that impact their disease risk.

A Mediterranean diet is rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruit and vegetables. Its virtues have been heralded many times before; a recent study found that it was the best option for people with diabetes.