May 24, 1999 – The blueberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), known as blueberries in Canada, will it be the next miracle food? As an antioxidant, it comes first out of 39 common fruits and vegetables, because it has 50% more than strawberries, 125% more than orange and 250% more than spinach, thanks to the anthocyanosides which give it its dark blue color. . Some American scientists are so impressed with its characteristics that they recommend eating 125 milliliters per day, which is immensely more than the average of 600 milliliters (2 1/2 cups) per year consumed by citizens of the United States. . “If you want to decrease the damage caused by free radicals that promote the aging process, eat blueberries,” says Ronald Prior, PhD, the biochemist at Tufts University in Boston, who discovered the antioxidant properties of blueberries. Obviously, we should not limit ourselves to fruits and vegetables rich in antioxidants, but add these to the fruits and vegetables that we already eat.
But that’s not all: Blueberries appear to help reverse the short-term memory loss that plagues aging people. In any case, that’s what revealed an experiment carried out on rats by James Joseph, PhD, a researcher of the United States Department of Agriculture, also based at Tufts University. For two months, the researcher gave a blueberry extract to elderly rats. To his surprise, the rats regained their ability to remember the way out of a maze and improved their balance and speed.
We already knew that blueberries contain a lot of tannins, like its cousin the cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos and V. macrocarpon), and that these tannins are excellent agents for the prevention of urinary tract infections because they prevent the bacteria responsible for this disease from attaching to the walls of the bladder.
Finally, according to European research, bilberry improves night vision and adjustment to intense light. As a result of this research, blueberries have gained a reputation in Japan for their ability to relieve eye strain and are referred to as the “fruit of sight”. On this momentum, Ronald Prior, the same who discovered the antioxidant properties of blueberries, decided to study its ability to prevent macular degeneration, a disease of the retina which is the main cause of blindness after 65 years.
Definitely, we’ll never look at blueberry pie the same way again.
HealthPassport.net
