Posts Tagged “American Journal of Clinical Nutrition”
Consumption of wild blueberries can help blood vessel function and health, according to new research conducted by European researchers.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, in a study supported by the Alpro Foundation Grant and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, published the report last September.
The Wild Blueberry Association of North America in Portland, ME donated blueberry test materials (typically freeze dried powder of whole blueberries) for the study, which was conducted by researchers at the University of Reading in Reading, United Kingdom, University Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany, and the University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.
The findings are the first to link wild blueberry polyphenols, natural compounds that are present in goods volume in wild blueberries, to improvements in vascular function in healthy men, according to a news release from the WBANA.
“Importantly, even the lowest amount of wild blueberries tested in the study, equivalent to 3/4 cup of wild blueberries, was able to improve endothelial function, which is an amount easy to incorporate into a daily diet,” Ana Rodriguez-Mateos, from the Division of Cardiology, Pulmunology and Vascular Medicine at the University of Dusseldorf, said in the release.
“The simple message is eat your fruits and vegetables in all the colors,” said David Bell, executive director of the Wild Blueberry Commission. Bell said the research on health benefits may perhaps be true for cultivated blueberries, but researchers only studied wild blueberries.
Less than one percent of Maine’s wild blueberries are sold fresh, with nearly all the harvest frozen. Maine’s growers harvest about 86 million pounds of wild blueberries annually.
Bell said there are many more health studies “in the pipeline,” with more studies using clinical human trials and also delving into the “why” behind apparent health benefits.“What I think we are figuring out is that blueberries are up regulating some (positive) genes and down regulating other (negative) genes,” he said.
By The Alliance for Food and Farming
A new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that consumption of five servings of fruits and vegetables a day leads to a longer life. The comprehensive research, conducted in Sweden, studied more than 71,000 people aged 45 to 83 for 13 years. Among the key findings, eating fewer than five servings of fruits and vegetables each day is linked with a higher chance of dying early. Participants who ate at least one serving of fruit daily lived 19 months longer than those who never ate fruit, on average. And those who ate at least three servings of vegetables per day lived 32 months longer than people who reported not eating vegetables.
This Swedish study can be added to the decades of nutritional research that show the benefits of eating fruits and veggies on improved health. Another important example is the recent peer reviewed study published in the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology which found that if half of Americans increased their consumption of fruits and vegetables by a single serving, 20,000 cancer cases could be prevented. (It should be noted that most of these nutritional studies were conducted using conventionally grown produce.)
This type of science based evidence is why the Alliance for Food and Farming joins with public health experts, the government, and environmental groups in encouraging consumption of all fruits and vegetables – organic and conventional. Experts agree that both are grown safety and can be eaten with confidence.