Antioxidants in Vacciniums
& other fruits & veggies
"The nourishing of life, & how it flourishes
On death, and why, they utterly know; but not
The hill-born, earthy spring, the dark cold bilberries."
-C. S. Lewis
(1893-1963)
(1893-1963)
Virtually all berries & especially those with blue-black coloration have antioxidants that apparently protect the body from many ill effects of aging. These might or might not increase overall life expectancy, & might or might not have immediately measurable health effects; what is more certain is that a lifetime of including these berries in the diet helps preserve the quality of life toward the end.
There are scores of healthfood store herbal products that boast of their antioxidant value, when in reality these claims are based on (if anything) studies not of food supplements but of pharmaceutical grade extracts, & even those may not have a very strong likelihood of health benefit outside of a petry dish or high-dose animal modeled study. The assortment of stale herbs & extracts marketed to a gullible public rarely make health claims on their packaging, but in pamphlets, magazine articles, books, & from retail checkers' gossip, sales recommendations, lies, & allegations, many of these products are said to extend life & cure cancer & all sorts of other things, due to the antioxidants. In reality the vast majority of these products do nothing whatsoever (see the article on Ginkgo biloba for an example of the sad truth versus the sales pitches & baseless beliefs).
COMMENTARY ON A TYPICAL
Herbal hypochondriacs love to gobble down pills & if they have one bottle of pills in their house, they'll have twenty. They will never be satisfied with fresh or fresh-frozen bilberries or blueberries or with fruit juice or jams. It has to be a pill. | |
Anyone who is not gullible, unquestioning, superstitious, or stupid, already knows that herbal fads & folklore as filtered through the "food supplement" industry is 90% fraud & 10% confusion, rendering it difficult to believe the broad claims of the fantastical health values ascribed to bilberries.
But the idea of broadly healthful value for the antixoidants in fruits is largely factual. And if people who waste their money on indigestible "food supplements" devoid of the alleged health effects would, instead, eat plenty of fresh fruit, they would obtain legitimately much of what they thought they were getting from pills.
A 1999 article in The Journal of Neuroscience reported on animal-modeled studies conducted by Barbara Shukitt-Hale, PhD, at Tufts University, funded in part by the USDA. Funding sources are important to note; USDA funding would be less likely to introduce bias than, say, Blueberry Council funding, as the Blueberry Council would not renew funding if the findings were not pleasing to the Blueberry Council, & researchers whether intentionally or subconsiously are always influenced by the funding source.
In the Tufts University study, concentrated blueberry extract was added to the diet of male rats, & compared to rats who received the same overall diet but with strawberry extract instead of blueberries, with spinach extract instead of blueberries, & with a control group that had no supplemental extracts at all.
The four rat groups were tested for motor activity (walking on rods or planks), intelligence (solving mazes filled with water that they had to swim through), & their brains were also tested for key chemicals known to lessen with old age.
In their old age when rats began to decline, the rats receiving extracts of spinach & strawberry were doing better than those who received no supplements. But the rats in the blueberry group did best of all.
Of particular interest is the discovery that when supplements were started late in rat lives (rather than throughout life) only the rats in the blueberry group showed any reversal of loss of motor activity & cognitive decline associated with aging.
To restate this important point: all rats receiving fruit or vegetable supplements throughout their lives were benefited, but of those with supplements late in life, only those receiving blueberry extracts had reversals of age-related decline.
The theory is that antioxidant effects on the body (inclusive of heart & brain) are most accessible by the body when they originate in fruits.
Every fruit has its own chemical components with antioxidant potential, & it turns out those found in blueberries are among the most potent, though blueberries don't always come in at first-place in all studies.
A New Zealand study & a Japanese study both found that Black Currants (Ribes nigrum) ranked above Blueberries for antioxidant activity. A Michigan study found tart cherries, followed in descending order by raspberries, blackberries, & strawberries, were among the richest in anthocyanin, one of the more consequential antioxidants most easily absorbed by the body.
Different antioxidants are absorbed in different ways by the body, so a variety of fresh fruits & veggies is essential, not just blueberries.
Also, focusing too much on a single fruit source of antioxidants can too greatly increase the sugar intake, with negative consequences over a lifetime, although surprisingly antioxidant-rich russet potatoes cause greater insulin spiking than do blueberries.
A study (published in a 2002 issue of Nutrition & Cancer) conducted by Gary Stoner, PhD, at the Ohio State University Cancer Center, found Black Raspberries (Rubus occidentalis) outperformed blueberries in reducing the incidence of colon cancers, antioxidants "soaking up" free radicals associated with bodily decline.
In this study rats were given freeze-dried black raspberries, & compared to a group of rats receiving strawberries, a group receiving blueberries, & a group receiving no berries. Then the rats were injected with a chemical that induces colon cancer.
The three groups receiving fruit all had fewer incidents of tumors than the group without fruits, but by far the greatest protection against tumors was in the group receiving black raspberries, who had 80% fewer tumors.
This amazing finding is intriguing on two points: the greatly lowered incidence of tumors in the rats receiving black raspberries is certainly more impressive than a small statistical significance that might be exaggerated by herb-vendors; & actual fruits, rather than concentrated extracts, were sufficient to obtain this impressive response.
Unfortunately most of these effects were found only when the rats received very regular daily feedings of the fruits, in amounts that for a human equivalent would be four cups of the fruit every day. So eating a very few of these fruits at long intervals (as most of us do) would not be such a significant health benefit for rat or human.
Furthermore some sources of blueberries in the diet are fake -- frozen blueberry waffles or blueberry muffin mixes usually have blue-died apple bits & no actual blueberries, so some people may think they're eating blueberries when they're not getting any at all.
For this reason there is a fantasy-desire to find these antioxidants concentrated in pill form so that we can take one or two pills a day & get as much antioxidant as from four cups of fruit. No such pill or extract exists which packs that much into a small size. In the 1950s & 1960s at the beginning of the Space Age, people actually dreamed ofa future where you could take a small Chicken Casarole Pill, Meatloaf Sandwich Pill, or just add water & have apples or potatoes & gravy grow from the pills.
To some extent, today's belief that you can get the antioxidant nutrients of four cups of berries in one or two gel-capsules is a hold-over from the more retarded & ridiculous notions of an Atomic Future wherein the Jetsons don't even have to walk to get to the other side of their apartment, every movement or human need being automated.
The extracts sold in healthfood stores are rarely unadulterated (see commentary in side-bar) & the public does not have access to pharmaceutical grade extracts. If one could get pharmaceutical grade extracts not cut with other products, & if these contracts were, say, four times stronger than the whole fruit, even then that would require one to drink a whole cup of extract, rather than a couple small capsules.
On the other hand, if every time you went to the referigerator for a beer or a soda pop, you got fruit juice instead, you'd have a vastly increased daily intake of the requisit antioxidants, which are also available in a wide array of other foods.
Similar antioxidant actions are being discovered in increasing numbers of foods. Among vegetables, russet potato, artichokes, & beans are the highest ranking for absorbable antioxidant compounds. Among fruits, the highest rankings are in highbush cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpum), blueberries, blackberries, & berries generally. Also ranking highly were nuts (especially peacans, walnuts & hazels) & such spices as ground cloves, cinnamon, & oregano.
The highest ranking of all were small red beans, second highest were wild blueberries, third highest were red kidney beans, fourth was pinto beans, fifth were cultivated blueberries, sixth cranberries, seventh artichoke, eighth blackberry, ninth dried prune, tenth raspberry, eleventh strawberry. An Oslo study ranked walnuts, pomegranates, blueberries, blackberries, ginger, fruit & berry juices generally, green tea, kiwi fruits, tomatoes, spices, blue potatoes, blue broccoli, & red cabbage as high in antixodants. So you begin to see, it would be easy to get a healthy daily intake of antioxidants without seeking out magic pills that have little or no value beyond that of a placebo.
All these foods have easily absorbed natural antioxidant compounds which can lower the incidence of cancers, circulatory problems including heart disease, with some possibility of reducing incidents of alzheimers. People devoted to meat-based Atkins diets can be expected to live shorter lives & be more brain-addled in old age than people who always ate plenty of fruits & vegetables.
Wild blueberries (including almost any species, but the one usually tested is Vaccinium angustifolium, followed by V. myrtilloides, this latter being the same as called bilberries & most popular in herbal remedies of dubious value) rank highest for antioxidant effects; whereas cultivated blueberries (V. corymbosum, the highbush blueberry which is usually bought at the grocery) may fall to as low in ranking as fourth, which is still pretty darned high.
By no means have all Vaccinium species been tested, but enough have been tested to say pretty much certainly that any vaccinium species (blueberries, huckleberries, highbush cranberries) will have higher than average amounts of easily absorbed antioxidants.
Huckleberries of the Gaylussacia genus; raspberries & blackberries & other berries of the Rubus genus; & tart cherries aka pie cherries (Prunus cerasus), are all of high consequence for antioxidants. A variety of berries is better than focusing on, say, increasing the amount of blueberries in one's diet, as blueberries don't include everything significant in the antioxidant category.
The Tufts University research & others usually note that the antioxidant theory is still only a theory -- the best guess as to why certain foods from beans to blueberries seem to have a positive effect on human health & aging.
The bottom line seems to be all edible berries are good for their antioxidant activity, with blueberries & black currants & tart cherries quite a lot higher than the average. Studies have been done on concentrated extracts, freeze-dried fruits, & fresh or fresh-frozen fruits, & all show these same values.
In our Meat, Eggs, Bread & Pasta age, too few human diets include enough veggies & fruits to get the positive effects being discussed. Dried herbal supplements are way too trivial in their antioxidant potential to make up the difference. If dried fruits or fruit-roll-ups replaced candy intake; if more fruits were gotten into the diet by means of jellies & jams & fresh fruits; if some kind of berry could be included with almost every meal, a family would be well on the way to obtaining a maximum daily intake of antioxidants. Taking on the "hobbies" of baking berry cobblers, or seasonally canning berries as jams, jellies, & preserves for use later in the year, would more than do the trick.
One easy way to get people to "accidentally" take in enough berry concentrates without having to start a new hobby or force fresh fruit down everyone's throat would be if all soda pops & sweetened teas & other packaged drinks were not just colored sugar waters, but had berry concentrates as their main sweeteners or entire content. Since this isn't the case for most such products, a consumer will just have to make the health-conscious choice to purchase & bring home no soda pops or artificially flavored drinks ever again, but expose the family exclusively to fruit drinks.
If every time a family member got themselves a bottled or canned drink from the refrigerator it was real fruit juice rather than colored sugar water, they'd be getting much of their daily antioxidants requirement without a second thought.