Content provided in partnership with
Berry berry good
Nutrition Action Healthletter, June, 2005 by David Schardt
Just keep in mind that an 8-ounce glass of cranberry juice or cocktail has around 140 calories. "Light" cranberry juice cocktails, which replace sugar with the safe artificial sweetener Splenda (sometimes also with acesulfame-potassium, which may not be safe), have only 40 calories a glass. "The light versions work just as well," says Howell.
As for cranberry pills, "it's hit-or-miss," she says. The pills most likely to contain the active ingredients are made of powdered whole cranberries rather than an extract. The label should say something like "made from whole berries."
(1) Cochrane Database Syst. Rev. (3): CD001321, 2001.
(3) Canadian Journal of Urology 9: 1558, 2002.
(2) BMJ322: 1571, 2001.
(4) Cochrane Database Syst. Rev. (2): CD001321, 2004.
Blueberries
"Blueberries Outsmart Alzheimer's," shouted the headline in Prevention magazine last year.
"If you had to pick one food to ensure your lowest rates of dementia as you get older, blueberries are the thing," proclaims Stephen Pratt, co-author of the best-selling book SuperFoods: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life.
Maybe if you're a rodent.
"There clearly are antioxidants, and perhaps some other chemicals, in blueberries that can do good things to nerve cells in animals," points out Mark Mattson, Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore.
Teaching Old Rats New Tricks
Researchers Jim Joseph and Barbara Shukitt-Hale have been feeding fruits and vegetables to laboratory animals since 1998 at the Jean Mayer U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston.
"We looked at spatial learning and memory in older rats using a well-known water maze test," says Shukitt-Hale. In the experiment, rats swimming in a pool need to learn and remember where an underwater platform is located so that they can stand on it.
"For a person, it might be comparable to remembering where you left your car in the parking lot or figuring out how to get home from somewhere new," she explains.
The researchers took 19-month-old male rats (equivalent to about 65-year-old humans) and added blueberries, spinach, or strawberries to their diets for two months, until the rats were the equivalent of 75- or 80-year-olds. (1)
"After eating any of the three foods, the rats found the underwater platform more quickly than the control rats, who got only regular rat chow," says Shukitt-Hale.
Then they tested the motor coordination of older rats, first by making them balance on a stationary, horizontal rod and later by making them remain upright on a rotating, slowly accelerating rod.
For people, this might be like trying to walk on an uneven surface, like icy pavement during winter. "Think of it as taking your grandchildren to the park and trying to hang on the monkey bars with them," says Joseph.
The elderly rats who ate blueberries for two months were able to cling to the rods significantly longer than the rats who ate strawberries, spinach, or the rat chow.
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Arts
Most Popular Articles in Health
- Fuel your workout: exercisers who eat before they work out have more energy ...
- Soothe a dry, itchy scalp: 5 easy expert solutions
- Cocktails and calories: Beer, wine and liquor calories can really add up. ...
- The sour truth about apple cider vinegar - evaluation of therapeutic use
- The, six best supplements you've never heard of: these secret weapons can ...
- More »