Resveratrol has been at the center of anti aging research and prolonged life expectancy studies for quite a few years. The most recent findings has put the spolight on this "miracle" supplement. In 2003, the groups of Howitz and Sinclair reported in the journal Nature that resveratrol significantly extends the lifespan of the yeast. Later studies conducted by Sinclair showed that resveratrol also prolongs the lifespan of the worm and the fruit fly. In 2007, a different group of researchers was able to reproduce Sinclair's results with round worms.

In 2006, Italian scientists obtained the first positive result of resveratrol supplementation in a vertebrate. Using a short-lived fish, with a median life span of nine weeks, they found that resveratrol increased the median lifespan by 56%. Compared with the control fish at nine weeks, that is by the end of the latter's life, the fish supplemented with resveratrol showed significantly higher general swimming activity and better learning to avoid an unpleasant stimulus.

Later the same year, Sinclair reported that resveratrol counteracted the detrimental effects of a high-fat diet in mice. The mice fed the standard diet (with resveratrol) and the high-fat diet (with resveratrol) had a 30% lower risk of death than the mice on the high-fat diet without resveratrol. Insulin and glucose levels in mice on the high-fat+resveratrol diet were closer to the mice on standard diet than to the mice on the high-fat diet.