Eat Your Blueberries!

By:
Jonny Bowden

Let's talk about superfoods.

In case you were wondering, I define superfoods as foods that have so many healing and healthy properties that just adding them to your diet on a regular basis gives you major protective dosages of all kinds of disease-fighting compounds. These foods are so loaded with antioxidant and phytochemical power that they really deserve the name "superfood." And I'm telling you that you can get significant health benefits by just adding these ordinary supermarket foods to whatever else you're eating.

And every one of these foods can be used as part of a weight loss program.

At the top of the list is blueberries.

Blueberries have been found to have one of the highest ORAC values of any food in the world. What does that mean? Well ORAC is a rating system for antioxidant power. Scientists look at how all the different phytochemicals and antioxidants in a given food perform together and then give an overall rating to the food based on its performance. Think of a sports team. A championship team doesn't win a championship just because it has good players. It becomes outstanding because of how well they work together as a group. The best teams are more than just the sum of their individual players. Well, it's the same thing with antioxidants. The ORAC rating looks at how well the antioxidants in a given food work together and how much protection and value they give you when taken as a group in that particular food. And one of the highest scorers of all time is blueberries. Blueberries are low in sugar. They're high in fiber. And research is constantly revealing their almost magical healing properties.

For example, there've been some dramatic studies on blueberries and memory. Researchers at Tufts University and the USDA published a study in the Journal of Neuroscience showing that animals that consumed an extract of blueberries, strawberries and spinach every day showed significant improvements in short term memory. What's more, in that same study, only the animals consuming the blueberries also improved their balance and coordination, which tend to deteriorate as we get older. Blueberries might wind up being one of your great anti-aging remedies, and they cost a lot less than drugs!

If improvement in memory, protection against loss of balance and coordination and protection of blood vessels wasn't enough, it looks like blueberries can also help promote urinary tract health. According to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, blueberries ‑- like cranberries ‑- contain compounds that help prevent the bacteria responsible for urinary tract infections from attaching to the bladder wall.

Want more reasons to eat blueberries? They may help prevent a leading cause of blindness! In fact, wild blueberries are called "the vision fruit" in Japan, because they have very high concentrations of anthocyanin, a natural antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compound whose benefits reportedly include reducing eyestrain and improving night vision. And there are currently plans to study the ability of blueberries to prevent macular degeneration, a disease of the retina and the leading cause of blindness in people over age 65.

Want even more? How about fighting cancer? A University of Illinois study looked at a particular compound called a flavanoid that inhibits an enzyme involved in promoting cancer. Of the fruits tested, wild blueberries showed the greatest anticancer activity.

You can get all these amazing health benefits just by eating half a cup a day of wild or frozen blueberries. Add them to salads, toss them onto cereals or throw them into a smoothie.

Now here's the key to using blueberries as part of a weight loss regimen. If you're very ‑- I mean very ‑- carb sensitive and your blood sugar goes on a roller-coaster ride at the mere mention of the phrase "Ben and Jerry's," you may need to limit all fruit in the very beginning. But as soon as you can put it back, start with blueberries. And if you're not in that highly resistant metabolic category to begin with, you can eat blueberries right from the beginning. Nearly all the low-carb plans allow them after the first two weeks ‑- some allow them from the beginning. They even get the okay from Atkins, at least after the first two weeks or so. And of course they're a staple of all the lower calorie, low-fat diets.

How does one little food get the approval of virtually every diet guru no matter what side of the nutritional fence she lives on? Simple. All the health benefits discussed above plus: