Blueberries have been making nutritionists' top 10 best foods lists for years. Scientific research on the health benefits of blueberries, and specifically blueberry juice, has uncovered new reasons for why blueberries can be considered a "super food." Blueberries are among the group of colorful fruits and vegetables with beneficial phytochemicals.
Nutrients
Blueberries contain vitamin C, dietary fiber and manganese, all of which are necessary for balanced health. The U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council says a half-cup serving of blueberries contains about 14 mg of vitamin C, roughly 25 percent of the Recommended Dietary Allowance.
Blueberries also contain anthocyanin, an antioxidant plant pigment that gives the berry its distinctive color. Antioxidants are believed by food scientists to help the body eliminate free radicals. Free radicals are unstable oxygen molecules associated with cancer, heart disease and the effects of aging.
Illness Prevention
Blueberries protect against aging, diabetes and urinary tract infection. Adding two and one half cups of wild blueberry juice to their daily diet helped a small group of people in their 70s improve their memory and learning abilities, according to a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The volunteers invited to take part in the study had experienced age-related memory loss and memory lapses. Memory tests taken before and at the end of the 12-week study showed that those who drank blueberry juice showed significantly greater improvement on learning and memory tests compared to a group that consumed a non-juice beverage.
Daily consumption of blueberries can help prevent type 2 diabetes, according to the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University.
In a study published in The Journal of Nutrition, researchers reported that blueberries increased insulin sensitivity, a key factor in type 2 diabetes prevention.
The Rutgers University Blueberry Cranberry Research Center found that both blueberries and cranberries contain anthocyanins, a compound that prevents the accumulation of bacteria that leads to urinary tract infections.
Cancer and Heart Disease
Researchers from California to Canada have a hunch that blueberries can help prevent heart disease and cancer, too. So far, most of the research into the potential of blueberries to prevent these diseases have taken place in laboratory animals, with encouraging results. Research at the University of Maine in Orono found that lab animals fed wild blueberries had improved blood pressure and reduced accumulation of fat in their arteries.
Wild blueberries fed to lab animals helped protect them from brain damage following a stroke, according to a study by the University of Prince Edward Island, PEI, Canada.
Natural resource scientists with the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, are studying blueberries for their potential as a cancer preventative while cell biologists in California and Rhode Island reported that phytochemicals in blueberries reduced the size and growth of rodent breast cancer tumors in a study published in Cancer Research.
References
- U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council
- Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry: Blueberry Supplementation Improves Memory in Older Adults
- The Journal of Nutrition: Bioactives in Blueberries Improve Insulin Sensitivity in Obese, Insulin-Resistant Men and Women
- Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry: Effective separation of potent antiproliferation and antiadhesion components from wild blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium Ait.) fruits
- Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry: Dietary enrichment with wild blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) affects the vascular reactivity in the aorta of young spontaneously hypertensive rats
- Nutritional Neuroscience:Feeding rats diets enriched in lowbush blueberries for six weeks decreases ischemia-induced brain damage
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