As the high season for summer fruit begins, an unfolding plot has tart cherries giving blueberries the raspberry. Blackberries also are making themselves heard.
A fruit war heating up with the weather is being fought over levels of antioxidants, molecules that may have a role in the prevention of disease by inhibiting the production of free radicals — not to be confused with erstwhile associates of Abbie Hoffman. Basically, high levels of antioxidants in plants and their fruit protect them from chemical chain reactions that can damage or kill cells. Eating them can theoretically provide our bodies with the same protection.
Blueberries became the first “superfruit” in the ’90s. Though many foods are comparably high in antioxidants, blueberries got a head start with the public as research into foods believed to have health-promoting and/or disease-preventing properties accelerated.
With a niche created, exotic fruits such as acai from an Amazonian palm tree and goji from a Himalayan plant have become the latest attention getters, as if the farther away and the more expensive fruits are, the better they must be.
That was enough for the Cherry Marketing Institute (CMI), which was sick and tired of having a venerable “homey” get overlooked.
“There is no question that the success of the blueberry folks got the attention of the tart cherry industry and was part of the reason to launch a program,” said Jeff Manning, CMI chief marketing officer.
Employing an impressive, cherry-colored nutrition report, CMI is bombarding news outlets. Tart cherries are full of melatonin, which is believed to aid sleep and regulate human biorhythm. Their rich red color is provided by anthocyanins, which are being studied for their possible role in the reduction of inflammation, such as that from arthritis. A new study presented in April by researchers at the University of Michigan found that tart cherries also might help reduce risk factors associated with heart disease and metabolic syndrome.
The other reason for the cherry campaign, Manning said, is that most people associate cherries with summer, so they largely are forgotten by the time the kids go back to school. Tart cherries, as you and your grandmother know, are great for pies, but they can be consumed all year long in dried, frozen and juice form. Plus, they’re mostly grown in Michigan, not some far-flung locale with a name you can’t even pronounce.
Blackberries, too, are taking the offensive. In May, a leading distributor noted that a recent study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) found they contain the most antioxidants per serving from among 1,500 different foods tested. The timing coincided with an avalanche of blackberries in local stores that would make a bear salivate with glee.
Nutrition professionals tend to see the silver lining in the marketing battle for antioxidant supremacy.
“I do think the take-home message is that the berry family is very rich in antioxidants and that it is ideal to consume a variety of them as often as possible,” said Clare Hasler, executive director of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science at the University of California, Davis. “A mixture of the top five or six antioxidant berries daily would be ideal. We really don’t know which fruit is better at this point because we really don’t know what a laboratory test indicating that a food has a high-antioxidant capacity means for overall health.
“There needs to be a lot more randomized, controlled clinical trials with humans consuming fruit, separately and in combination,” Hasler said, and then that data should be studied in relation to certain diseases.
When faced with the question of which superfruit is “better” for you, said physician and dietitian Christine Gerbstadt, ask yourself which ice cream is better: “chocolate, vanilla, strawberry or Neapolitan?”
“There are over 4,000 identified antioxidant compounds, and it is unknown how many more,” said Gerbstadt, who is a spokeswoman for the Chicago-based American Dietetic Association. “Assays [tests] for measuring these are the tip of the iceberg, so many can’t be conveniently assayed or measured.” The AJCN study found that of the 50 food products highest in antioxidant concentrations “13 were spices, 8 were in the fruit and vegetables category, 5 were berries, 5 were chocolate-based, 5 were breakfast cereals and 4 were nuts or seeds.”
When typical serving sizes were used, blackberries, walnuts, strawberries, artichokes, cranberries, brewed coffee, raspberries, pecans, blueberries, ground cloves, grape juice and unsweetened baking chocolate were at the top of the ranked list. The take-home message there could be: Consume plenty of spicy, chocolate/clove cereal bathed in vegetable juice, topped with nuts and berries and chased with a cup of grape juice-flavored coffee.
Or, as Gerbstadt recommended, aim for nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day for health and chase them with a liberal dose of common sense.
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Some antioxidant-rich foods
The top 15 foods with the highest antioxidant content per serving size, ranked from most to least. David Jacobs, a study co-author and professor of epidemiology and community health at the University of Minnesota, cautions that there are still many unknowns when it comes to antioxidants and disease prevention, including how much of them is absorbed when people consume them in food, how much is retained during digestion and “the relevance of the digested antioxidant to the whole body biology.”
Blackberries (1 cup)
Walnuts (1 ounce)
Strawberries (1 cup)
Artichokes, prepared (1 cup)
Cranberries (1 cup)
Coffee (8 ounces)
Raspberries (1 cup)
Pecans (1 ounce)
Blueberries (1 cup)
Cloves, ground (1 teaspoon)
Grape juice (8 ounces)
Chocolate, baking, unsweetened (1ounce)
Cranberry juice (8 ounces)
Cherries, tart (1 cup)
Wine, red (3.5 ounces)
Source: Rune Blomhoff, Department of Nutrition, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, for the American Journal for Clinical Nutrition
