Health conscious drinkers (oxymoron alert) who choose red wine over white because of its heart protective qualities are now faced with a pleasant new dilemma – which wine will go best with the meal.

A new study where rats were fed white wine suffered less heart damage during cardiac arrest than animals fed only water or grain alcohol such as beer or vodka, reports New Scientist.

The benefits were similar to those from red wine and its wonder ingredient resveratrol, which is found only in grape skin.

White wine contains no resveratrol as it is made only from grape pulp, with no skin, leading some to attach the ‘French paradox’ of a high fat diet with low heart disease rates to moderate consumption of red wine.

University of Connecticut School of Medicine molecular biologist Dipak Das said to New Scientist that it’s not just reds, as “The flesh of the grape can do the same job as the skin."

Molecular heart cell tests show mitochondria, the cell powerhouses, are protected by white wine, while damage to them from lack of nutrients or oxygen usually leads to their suicide: apoptosis.

Wine drinking rats boasted mitochondria in much better shape with less cardiac cells entering apoptosis, including rats receiving polyphenols such as tyrosol and hydroxytyrosol from white wine and resveratrol from red.

Hatter Institute for Cardiology Research in Cape Town, South Africa director Lionel Opie said Das’s data is compelling evidence white wine protects lab rats from the effects of a heart attack, while pointing out that human heart attacks also occur due to clots in diseased arteries rather than mitochondrial failure.

Mr Opie also said experiments in dogs – that were more relevant – showed no benefit for white wine, but expects similar studies to prove white wine’s worth shortly.

"We can safely say that one to two glasses of white wine per day works exactly like red wine," he said to New Scientist.

In good news for Antipodean men, Mr Das also remarked that while the evidence is thin so far, an “English paradox” may be yet to emerge as "beer is also cardioprotective."