DATE: Saturday, March 22, 1997              TAG: 9703220959

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   53 lines

GRAPE JUICE, BENEFICIAL, AND IT TASTES GOOD, TOO!

I am sitting here drinking grape juice and wondering why the heck.

True, a scientist announced the other day that grape juice is good for the heart.

It slows the buildup in the blood of platelets, a scurvy lot.

But the same scientist who brings us glad tidings of grape juice also played a role discovering that an aspirin a day helped the heart - and that didn't send me on a lunge for the medicine cabinet.

The difference is, an aspirin doesn't taste worth a toot, but the grape juice is delicious. Goes down easy.

It tastes so good that, all these years, one has been figuring that it can't be good for you, which is the way with most things in this old world. And the viler the flavor, the more nutritious the viand, such as broccoli. You've noticed that. It is one of the first things we learn.

And one day we must ponder why that has to be, but now let's stick with the grape juice. It has a reputation for being expensive, a notion that spread during the 1930s Depression when people had to watch every penny.

That's how the expression ``Let me put my two cents in'' arose.

It was a respectable sum.

Two cents back then was two-fifths of a nickel, and a nickel would buy a bottle of pop; or a dill pickle from a barrel with scum across it, with two soda crackers thrown in by the grocer; or five jaw breakers; or a roll of caps to load a cap pistol.

Today a nickel is worth about three millipedes, which will buy very little worth celebrating.

Irene Rich, a curvy lady who wore expensive finery, was associated in some way with grape juice, another reason to deem it costly.

Stopping by a supermarket for dog food, I checked in a beverage section half a block long and was astonished to find it bereft of grape juice.

It offered cran-grape juice, which would be at best only half as efficacious as straight grape.

It also displayed a large bottle of purple liquid, a blend of 100 percent juices, the label claimed, with grape flavoring. In other words, it was an utter imposter.

Another exotic purple drink, styled as a supplement for athletes, had a label admitting: ``There is no scientific evidence that this will be beneficial to your health.''

Perhaps there had been a run on grape juice, but the shelves were stocked to the gills with all kinds of substitutes and had an air of having been grape juiceless a long time.

At any rate, I found a bottle of grape juice elsewhere and am enjoying it without any thought of how much it cost or whether it is doing good. I also have a renewed faith in truth in advertising, when one takes time to read the labels.

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