Fruit Sugar Fear: Facts & Fictions

Sometimes it seems our relationship with sugar resembles a turbulent tango. We pull it close when we want it, in cookies, cakes, and sodas. But even when we pull away, it’s there – in prepared foods, condiments, and crackers. It plays with our brains and makes us want it more. There’s no sugar-coating it – we love it, and we can’t quit it.

Yet we must. Unhealthy amounts of sugar in our diets are adding calories, increasing rates of obesity and its associated diseases, and even adversely affecting those who are not overweight. Our tumultuous affair with sugar is linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, inflammation, and even stroke.

Because of the dangers associated with Americans’ high sugar consumption, moderating sugar intake is a priority. But for some, sugar fear has lead to Atkins-level abstinence, causing some of us to blame all sugars, including fruit sugars. Some dismiss fruit completely because they consider it full of sugar, high in calories, or a danger to blood glucose levels. Some reckless diet peddlers even recommended eliminating fruit altogether as a way to lose weight.

We know getting the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables is important for proper nutrition and disease prevention. We also know that avoiding fruit sugars is simply wrong-headed.

Putting Fruit Sugar in Perspective 

What are fruit sugars? Fruit sugars are naturally-occurring simple sugars found in many plants. Known by the names fructose, sucrose, and galactose, these natural sugars vary in their amounts from food to food with fruits generally weighing in at around 4-25 grams. Wild blueberries, for example, have 7 grams per 100 gram serving, while a banana contains around 15 (depending on its size). To put this figure in perspective, added sugar in a soda adds up to approximately 60 grams – and that’s without any of the benefits that fruits offer.

Naturally-occurring fruit sugars are part of food’s structural elements. They give fruit and some veggies their sweet taste. When we eat whole fruit, we consume these simple sugars along with a multitude of vitamins, nutrients, minerals, fiber, and valuable phytonutrients. Whole fruits, with their sugars, are the natural delivery system for anthocyanin, a flavonoid with potent antioxidant capacity for powerful health protection potential, including the prevention of heart disease and some cancers, as well as other diseases of aging. For diabetics and those at risk for diabetes, fruit sugars have the advantage. High fiber fruits like berries, for example, decrease the absorption of sugar in the bloodstream, contributing to glycemic control. Simply put, fruit sugars are perfectly healthy – they are no less beneficial than those in any vegetable or carb, and should not be singled out when it comes to health. They provide us with good energy that satisfies our stomachs, hydrates us, keeps us moving, and quiets the daily ravages of cellular inflammation our bodies experience. And, they do so in a low-calorie, delicious package.

At a time when we are encouraged to decrease our intake of empty calories in favor of nutrient-rich ones, fruit sugars are a gift from nature, wrapped in a velvet ribbon. The best part may be that they are available to us both fresh and in their nutritional equal, frozen. That’s right – fruit sugars literally grow on trees (and bushes).

Wild Blues Have A Sweet Advantage

Cutting calories without sacrificing nutrition is a wise weight-loss strategy, and seeking out fruits that deliver the best nutrition and taste is sound nutritional advice. While embracing a variety of fruits is good nutritional practice, some fruits get the nod when it comes to big benefits. Wild blueberries, like all whole fruit, are naturally low in fat, high in fiber, and have no added sugar, sodium, or refined starches. But with more total antioxidant capacity than 20 other common fruits, they lead the pack in antioxidant capacity, thanks to their high anthocyanin content. They are also rich in manganese, which is important for bone development. And, when it comes to low-calorie nutrition, wild blueberries excel. They have just 45 calories per 100 grams (71 calories in a cup), and deliver nutrients and antioxidants in every one. Watching your sugar intake? There’s no better way to moderate than to eat naturally-occurring fruit sugars via this powerful blue package of nutrients.

In addition to their intense nutrition, wild blueberries can help equip us to prevent diabetes. In fact, a number of researchers have reported on the anti-diabetic effects of blueberry-supplemented diets. Wild blueberries are also a low GI food (they score a low 53, and they have a low glycemic load to boot). Understanding the glycemic values of food, especially for people with diabetes, make it easier to plan meals and pay attention to weight loss and appetite control.

The Bottom Line 

Concerns about sugar consumption in our diets are warranted, but turning our back on whole fruit would be a nutritional calamity. Fruit packs an intense nutritional punch that provides us with valuable disease prevention properties, weight control benefits, and helps stabilize blood sugar and glucose levels. Naturally-occurring fruit sugars are nature’s way of delivering the goods in a perfect nutritional package.

In an effort to moderate our sugar intake, we should start with avoiding additives by reading juice labels and choosing fruits packed in water. We should shop for whole fruit in the produce section or in the frozen food section, and seek out labels with as few ingredients as possible – ideally, just one. Then, we should monitor sugar creep in cereal, sodas, processed foods and desserts. Finally, we should eat 3 cups of vegetables along with the recommended 2 cups of fruit, and choose them in a variety of deep, rich colors. Then, we’ll be saying hooray for fruit without reservations for all it does to support our health, our waistlines, and our taste buds the way no other food on earth can.

Learn more about eating sugar in moderation. SweetSurprise.com is a trusted source for accurate information on the subject of high fructose corn syrup and how to moderate your sugar intake.

Diabetes, Wild & “The Newsroom”

Why This Story Won’t Be On HBO’s New Series 

 

A scene from a recent episode of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series The Newsroom takes place in May of 2011. In it, a reporter implores her producer to open the show with news of the debate in Congress about lifting the debt ceiling. It’s the most important story of the day, the week, and the month, she says, and it’s critical the public knows about it. But it’s a crusade with no traction: a provocative tabloid story is consuming the news, and that will lead instead.

The story about the effect of wild berries on a major health epidemic has some similarities to this recent The Newsroom storyline.  Here’s why.

Our Diets are Putting Us at Risk

Unlike some health stories, news about the diabetes epidemic has grabbed headlines. It was recently reported that 1 in 4 children, according to a study from Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, either have or are at risk of type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is being diagnosed in children and teenagers at a once-unthinkable rate, and its growth parallels America’s growing obesity statistics.

“If someone is obese, their risk of developing diabetes is twenty- to fortyfold higher,” Dan Nadeau, Medical Director of the Diabetes and Endocrinology Associates of Maine’s York Hospital told Wild About Health last month. Diabetes is not just a disease that exists in a vacuum: having diabetes means you are at increased risk of Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart and vascular disease, inflammation, accelerated aging many other complications, Nadeau said. A diagnosis of type 2 diabetes can be a death sentence or a wake-up call.

Type 2 is the most common form of diabetes in America today, and while millions of Americans have been diagnosed, many more are unaware they are at high risk. The New York Times recently reported that a dangerous form of type 2 diabetes also develops in people who aren’t overweight. One thing remains clear: diabetes is linked to our diets and it is a lifestyle disease that is, in most cases, entirely preventable.

But the lead is buried in the story. Understanding the impact of completely accessible, wild-grown foods and incorporating them into our diets can transform the lives of those diagnosed and those at risk. The fact is, help for these dire health issues is available—right now, growing in late summer in Maine and parts of Canada—and it’s being made available to us all year round. The effect of berries grown wild under circumstances that make them uniquely powerful against disease and the effect of those berries on the health of millions is front page news – today, this week, and this month.

At least, it should be.

Wild Foods: A Message of Health

We are fortunate to be able to take advantage of real food that is grown naturally in the wild. In areas that are challenged with availability, government, private, and local initiatives continue to make it more available and more affordable. But why differentiate between wild and non-wild foods when it comes to health and disease prevention? We must. While some of us are getting the message about wild-grown foods, others have yet to understand the implications.

First, it is important to know that wild foods occur naturally in their own indigenous environment. They are not planted or cultivated from seeds. Cultivated foods can be healthy, but they are created with human interference, and too often lack the natural nutrients and minerals that today we so desperately need returned to our diets. (Look no further than seedless grapes and iceberg lettuce for examples of human interference that drastically reduces nutrient content.)  With wild, these nutrients are provided, naturally, in their most intense, unadulterated form.

Another important characteristic of wild foods is that they are strong, having adapted to their environment. In fact, the harsher the environment, the more potent the protection they have. Wild blueberries, for example, are grown in rugged terrain in temperature extremes under intense sun exposure, and they have developed natural protection against those extremes. Phytochemicals found in their skins provide antioxidant protection against these stressors. Ready for another headline? When you eat these foods, you get the same antioxidant protection for yourself. And that’s the natural, wild benefit that is right under our nose. Just think what a story like that could become in the hands of Aaron Sorkin.

Find out more about why wild plants can protect you from cancer

A Catalyst for Dietary Change

While our diabetes risk can be prevented by our lifestyle choices, some diagnosed cases can even be reversed. Exercise is important, but what you eat has the biggest impact when it comes to weight loss and blood sugar levels. A recent study from the Harvard School of Public Health showed that consumption of anthocyanin-rich fruits can reduce diabetes risk. More than two servings per week has lowered risk compared with those who ate less than on serving per month. Wild blueberries top the list of berries that are high in anthocyanins. These high levels of anthocyanins are concentrated in the deep blue skin of berries like wild blues. They work to decrease the inflammation in the body that accompanies disease and provide us with protection.

Eating potent wild berries is not the only step in a program of prevention, but it is an important one – and it’s one that works. Nadeau cites wild blueberries as the catalyst for making major changes for his patients. This anthocyanin-rich, low GI-food doesn’t spike blood sugar and is packed with fiber. It can also be eaten in robust amounts in things like super-potent smoothies which provide a concrete, good-tasting recommendation that can prompt dietary change.

Researchers have also found that the bioactives in blueberries increase insulin sensitivity, a key factor in prevention. And while this news is exciting, it complements a long list of researchers that have reported on the anti-diabetic effects of blueberry-supplemented diets. Such broad but vigorous research can take time; the bottom line of knowledge can be cumulative. And, while evidence reinforcing the diabetes-wild berry connection continues to grow, there are things we don’t yet understand. The blueberry’s antioxidant effect, their synergy with other foods, and the specific compounds that act on our bodies to prevent disease are things scientists have yet to pinpoint.

Such a story – an accessible way to stop a major health issue – can be easily overshadowed by sexier, quicker, one-stop-shop health breakthroughs. But its impact is huge, and its message worth sending, no matter if it’s in the top block on Atlantis Cable News or buried somewhere on Page 9.

The Bottom Line

The wild blueberry is central in the discussion of how what we eat affects the most important health concerns of our time: cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and obesity. The research into berries and diabetes prevention is fascinating, but it can be hard to distill it into a single sound bite. The enigmatic details of this powerful connection is one reason it can only be found in nature—fresh, during the season, or frozen, preserving all the nutrition of fresh. As popular as they are, in some ways wild blueberries are still waiting for their close up.

Resources for Diabetes Prevention

Centers for Disease Control & Prevention – Topics, trends, and prevention program information.

American Diabetes Association – Advocacy, community, news, and research.

Mayo Clinic – Reliable source for symptoms, causes, and risk factors.

Warning Signs of Type 2 Diabetes – Identifying signs of a disease that is often hard to recognize.

Studies about Blueberries and Diabetes:

Berry Good News: Blueberries May Cut Diabetes Risk

Anthocyanin Intake Decreases Type 2 Diabetes Risk

Wild Blueberries-Diabetes Health Research

Learn more about GI and Diabetes

Five Very Unexpected Benefits of Eating Fruits & Vegetables

Apple Ipod  by Nina Matthews Photography, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License  by  Nina Matthews Photography 

Eating fruits and vegetables – widely across the color spectrum – can yield tremendous benefits when it comes to our health and disease prevention efforts. But there are some advantages to eating deeply colored, antioxidant-rich fruits and veggies that may not be on our radar. You can consider these five unexpected benefits just a healthy bonus for eating well. They might even provide a little extra motivation to get your servings.

1. Benefits for Runners

Runner’s World recently reported on a couple of outlandish food benefits especially for runners. One is eating blueberries. (The other is, surprisingly, beer.) A study from Appalachian State University showed that runners who ate a cup of blueberries every day had less inflammation and oxidative damage before and after their run. It’s no surprise – these antioxidant leaders are known to have a major impact on cellular inflammation. The powerful anthocyanins in the berries actually protected them from the after-effects of challenging workouts and helped recovery. If you are in training, eating a cup of anthocyanin-rich berries will help boost your performance and get you in shape for that marathon – or your next workout.

2. Help Quitting Smoking

New studies show there are major benefits associated with eating many types of fruits and veggies if you are trying to quit smoking. The reason is not just limited to replacing a bad habit with a healthy one. First, fruits and vegetables don’t trigger a desire for nicotine, and unlike some foods like meat and alcohol, they don’t enhance its flavor – they actually make it taste worse. Another reason that fruits and veggies can serve as a secret weapon for those trying to quit might be the satiety fruits and vegetables provide. It can help lessen the desire to smoke, and high fiber choices can contribute to that effect. (Fruits and veggies that are high antioxidants also provide protection against lung cancer and respiratory ailments, which can benefit smokers and former smokers.)

3. Prevent Depression 

A diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help reduce the risk of depression. Substantially so, according to the Mayo Clinic. Fruits and veggies that are deep in color and fiber-rich provide the most intense benefit. Also, B vitamins are a major weapon against depression because they help balance mood and even treat depression in those experiencing it (Vitamin B6 is found in many foods including bananas and spinach). Vitamin C (oranges, berries, leafy greens) has also been shown to enhance mood and stave off depression. Further studies have linked depression and wild blueberries. In 2010, a study conducted by a team led by Dr. Robert Krikorian, Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Cincinnati, confirmed that a diet supplemented with wild blueberries improved memory function and mood in older adults and could decrease depression in the elderly.

4. Change Your Friends…and the World

Eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables can be contagious. We mimic the habits of those we hang around with, which is why recent studies have indicated that obesity is contagious and our social circles affect our weight. Studies indicate that if you start eating better your friends will start eating better, not to mention the affect it will have on your family. If your diet is being sabotaged by your friends’ or co-workers’ bad habits, see what being a positive influence can do to those around you. If you are an influencer, your passion for fruits and veggies could actually start a badly-needed revolution of better health around the nation.

5. More Mojo

It may not be the first reason you change your eating habits, but it could be a reason to continue. Improving your love life can actually be a side effect of eating more fruits and vegetables. According to Slim Calm Sexy Diet author Keri Glassman, indulging in certain fruits like peaches, for example, can increase male hormone production and regulate thyroid function that helps increase libido for both men and women. Fruits and vegetables have the benefit of not just being good for us but boosting our energy and controlling our weight, which translates into feeling more amorous. And, foods high in nutrients, folic acid, potassium, and antioxidants translate into increased energy – and you can channel that in whatever way you’d like.

Learn what specific nutrients contribute to good health at Fruit and Veggies More MattersYou’ll also find out which fruits and vegetables provide the best sources of the nutrients you need. 

Blueberries May Preserve Brain Health: How A New Study Affects You

Blueberries have been honored with the “brain food” label for some time — even before we understood exactly what was meant by the term. For nutritionists, researchers, doctors, and even the layperson, it was clear that blueberries, especially the small, nutrient-dense wild blueberry, had an effect on brain clarity, brain performance, memory, and motor skills.

Through the years, researchers were able to understand more about why that moniker was so appropriate. They isolated components like antioxidants, and they began to gather data on which antioxidants affected brain function and brain aging. They discovered advantages for the heart, for cancer prevention, for inflammation, and for digestive and vision issues as well.

Research into brain health and blueberries is becoming well documented and better understood. Now, exciting new research reported last week provides additional evidence that a simple addition to the diet may help cognitive function and prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

New Research on Cognitive Health

The long-term study, conducted on humans by Harvard Researchers, is part of the Nurse’s Health Study. This study gathered data from 121,700 female, registered nurses between the ages of 30 and 55. They provided data beginning in 1976, and since 1980, reported on their food consumption and were tested for their cognitive function. The result of the study showed that those who ate more servings of blueberries and strawberries preserved their brain function to a greater degree than those who ate less.

The amounts consumed by nurses who were part of the study were completely manageable, topping out at around a serving or more per day, and the study showed the more intake the better. Those who consumed the most berries were able to delay cognitive aging by up to two and a half years. It will be no surprise to those who follow nutrition that some familiar compounds in these berries were at work: anthocyanidins (an anthocyanin counterpart) and flavonoids, which have powerful antioxidant properties, were found to be particularly effective in areas of intellectual performance, memory, and brain performance related to aging.

Brain Power & Blue

According to the study, smaller amounts of blueberries compared with strawberries were shown to make the difference in inhibiting cognitive decline. The study suggests, as reported in Huff Post Healthy Living, that eating one or more servings of blueberries or two or more servings of strawberries each week made the difference. These strikingly manageable amounts may be because of the concentrated nutrition, dark antioxidant-rich skin, and high skin-to-pulp ratio that is present in blueberries, especially wild blueberries.

Researchers allow that the study is not definitive – studies into the brain-berry connection is just beginning.  For example, we have yet to understand exactly how these influential antioxidants work, and have not yet isolated the component that acts on the brain. We don’t yet know if these components act in conjunction with other components, or even with other foods. So what makes this study so important, and what does it mean to us as consumers right now?

Why This Study is Important to You

1) It will help change our behavior. According to press, the berry-brain study is the first large, epidemiologic study of the berry, something heartening to researchers and nutritionists alike. Studies devoted to nutritional health are simply less exciting and less funded than those that promise new, non-food breakthroughs. Too bad: the knowledge we obtain as a result can have major implications. This study provides crucial new information that substantiates a less-than-sexy but ultimately powerfully nutritious food. While there has been previous research into the benefits of eating blueberries, and in particular the benefits to the brain, this new research helps to add to the evidence and may actually begin to shift our behavior.

2) The amounts are easy to achieve. This latest study was on humans living a normal life. Unlike well-known studies of mice consuming highly concentrated unmanageable amounts of nutritional components, this study indicates that just a few servings per week is all it might take to create a major health difference. According to the lead study author, Dr. Elizabeth Devore, a “simple dietary modification” was used to tests cognitive health, and it’s one accessible to all of us.

3) Improvement is significant and measurable. Results of the study indicate that those who consumed the most antioxidant-rich berries showed the most significant reduction in cognitive decline, with the largest delay being two and a half years. This sort of outcome is not just helpful for the individual; it could also add up to major gains for society at large.

4) It has implications for Alzheimer’s disease. Berry consumption could be one way to combat one of the more dire health issues facing an aging population. Alzheimer’s Association experts say that cognitive decline develops over many years and early signs of decline could indicate future dementia or Alzheimer’s onset. By consuming berries, you may be doing much more than just improving brain fog or senior moments – you may be protecting yourself against a destructive age-related disease.

5) You can begin today. To begin brain health preservation, there is no doctor’s appointment and no prescription necessary. Simply getting a serving of wild blueberries today can mark the beginning of your efforts to maintain brain health as you age. Visit your grocery store, make a stop at the freezer case, and buy them frozen, so getting a serving every day is easy. It could be one of the best things you’ll do for your health and your head.

Begin Today. Find our where to buy wild blueberries wherever you are.

Why Do We Avoid Eating Real Fruit? Top Reasons Revealed

Médecine douce… by alpha du centaure, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License  by  alpha du centaure 

Getting the recommended daily servings of fruit has real advantages. It can reduce disease, control weight, and provide health benefits as we age. Buying and eating real fruit can also support communities and growers and make a positive contribution to a national health crisis.

Reports from the CDC concerning how many Americans get the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables consistently reveal that most of us fall short. Yet, most Americans say they like fruit, and research providing evidence of the importance of real food nutrition is at an all time high. Are we avoiding eating fruit servings? Or do we have good intentions, but for one reason or another we don’t achieve our goals?

The answer is likely a little of both. We’ve uncovered four reasons behind our inability to get enough good, real fruit into our diet, and some real ways to avoid these traps in our own diets.

1. Deceptive Fruit Snacks

One of the biggest reasons we are missing our servings of real fruit is that we are eating foods that promise fruit servings instead. As a result, we feel like we are getting the benefit of them. The primary reason for this dietary misstep? The sheer proliferation of fruit snacks. There are hundreds of fruit snacks that look healthy and are marketed as providing fruit servings, but in fact, the first ingredient is often sugar, not fruit.

There is a growing market for packaged fruit –  it is a burgeoning sector that is taking advantage of our desire to eat nutritiously. What’s more, the pitch is working. Kids love fruit snacks, because they have billions of dollars in marketing telling them so, and snacks are ingeniously designed to wake up our taste buds and addict our brains. Moms like them too, because they appear to be guaranteeing a nutritious snack, and they assuage any guilt we may have about poor nutrition. It’s true that kids need to up their fruit intake, and fruit snacks are filling that need. But more often than not, all these foods are doing are blurring the line between fruit and candy in a way that renders it undetectable.

Packaged fruit snacks get a free pass, and they deter our ability to get real servings in the process. For example, if a snack has at least 2% in the U.S. or Canada, it can be legitimately labeled as being made with real fruit. Fruit snacks labeled as all-natural can include sky-high amounts of sugar, and none of the beneficial fiber that real fruits provide, which helps us feel full and satisfied. The more fruit snacks we include in our diet, the less room we have for real fruit, and less incentive to get them, because we think we already have. But real fruit provides benefits that fruit snacks, no matter how good their claims are, do not. Fruit has synergistic nutrients that work in conjunction with one another, and work in conjunction with other foods in a way that is advantageous to health and disease prevention. And this is something that has thus far eluded manufacturers of foods and supplements in their effort to replicate it.

2. Fake Fruit

One reason we aren’t eating our servings of fruit is that we are actually getting burned by fake fruit. Over the last year or so, much has been made about the existence of fake fruit, including, notably, fake blueberries, and the offending brands have been called out for using these fruit-like impostors.

Fake fruit can look like fruit and be marketed as such, but those blue globs can actually be cubes of partially hydrogenated oil and dextrose, not blueberries. It’s cheaper for companies to use trans fats as fruit, and it works, because we think we’re augmenting a less-than-healthy food with a spark of healthy fruit.

Fake-fruit foods can be pancake mixes, muffins, cereal, and granola bars, for starters. While front-of-label packaging on these foods may tout fruit, reading the label will reveal “made with imitation blueberries”. Avoid this fake fruit trap by throwing in a handful of frozen blueberries yourself if you are making pancakes, rather than relying on fat globs to provide the color. Do the same for cereal and muffins, or take the time to make your own healthy granola bars with real ingredients. Try these Blueberry and Maple Granola Bars from the Daily Green or our own Wild Blueberry Bars. Also, when you do buy packaged products, buy those that are reliable in their use of real ingredients, like these popular no-faux foods from Stonewall Kitchen, for example.

3. Convenience & Price 

Often, we give up a fruit serving because it’s easier to throw packaged food in our bag. A Pop-Tart®  or a Go-GURT®  won’t spoil, and you can carry it anywhere. It’s easier to pop a fruit snack into our lunch bag than to slice an apple and wrap it up. And, we tend to balk at the prices of fresh fruit on display at the grocery store. Its expense, not to mention the risk of it spoiling and the cost of that waste, doesn’t seem worth it.

But real health comes from real food, not from boxes. By limiting processed foods, it leaves more room for real. First, taking the extra time to buy and prepare fruits to have as snacks and to accompany meals is an essential habit to hone. Medicinenet.com suggests making fresh fruit bowl part of your décor, and making a point to dress up every plate with a fruit or veggie. But the best advice to combat inconvenience, especially when price is an issue, is to opt for frozen. Frozen is as nutritious as fresh and available year-round. It provides attractive price points, especially purchased in large amounts, and it doesn’t spoil, eliminating costly waste.

You can also learn how to stretch your fruit and veggie budget by downloading 30 ways in 30 days to Stretch Your Fruit & Vegetable Budget at Fruits and Veggies More Matters.

Got a convenient way to get your fruit servings? Tell us.

4. Our Brain  

Sometimes it’s the inscrutable grey matter in our skulls that’s the culprit when it comes to eschewing fruit servings. The desire for food that satisfies cravings goes way beyond just having a sweet tooth. That’s because the addictive quality of foods – especially foods that combine sugar, salt, and fat in optimum proportion – create pathways in our brains that simulate addiction and make us go back for more. It’s why we can eat an apple or a bowl or blueberries and feel satisfied, but comparable calories consumed from a snack cake only makes us want more.

This chemical reaction is no match for self-discipline. In fact, Dr. Oz considers sugar as addictive as drugs. Studies in rats show that stopping this food from entering the body can actually result in symptoms of withdrawal. Is there a solution to the strong pull of sugary foods that are edging out the fruits in our diets? There is.

– First, detox. Dr. Oz says a 28-day sugar rehab (right in your own home) will reset your body’s craving for foods and start you on a path to enjoying and being satisfied by real food again.

– Second, get healthy. Getting enough sleep, eating nutritious, protein-rich foods, and keeping your blood sugar stable by eating regularly (not starving or skipping) will improve your chance of succumbing to cravings.

– Then, choose. Don’t let Big Food dictate your behavior. It can be easier said than done, but understanding the hold food chemistry has on us is the first step to freeing ourselves from its grip.

– Finally, change: your kitchen, your shopping cart, and your kids’ lunch. After that, move into changing your kids’ lunch room, joining community efforts to support policy about food labeling and food growers, and taking a stand against the billions of dollars brilliantly spent on junk food marketing, especially to kids.


Get Your Real Fruit Servings 

Find out how many servings you need at Fruits and Veggies More Matters.

What’s So Great About Good Health

The Brain-Nutrition Connection & the Real Payoff of Being Healthy

We log time on the treadmill. We scrutinize our plates for nutrition. We watch our portions and increase our fruit and vegetable servings.

Why do we do it?

We want to be healthy. But what is good health? And why can “healthy” sometimes seem like it has a PR problem?

Here’s the “problem” with healthy:

  • You can’t show it off like a purse or a haircut.
  • Unlike a weight loss effort or 5K race, it’s constant, dynamic, and never-ending.
  • You can’t plan a party to celebrate the results – health benefits often occur 10, 20, even 50 years down the line.

So what’s to like about health? Where’s the flash? Where’s the sizzle?

Why Healthy Sizzles 

First, health does have some immediate benefits to relish. While it may take decades to see some of the effects of disease prevention, health has advantages in the present as well. It may not be as noticeable as a Gucci purse, but good nutrition is something you can wear – you can see it on your face, in the brightness of your skin and the glow in your eyes, and in the clothes that fit you better. If you are healthy, you can achieve more because you feel better and stronger inside and out, and that’s pretty flashy.

But here’s the real sizzle: health contributes to living a better life. Superfood orginator Dr. Steve Pratt explains health and longevity this way:

“Brain heart, eyes—they all go together. Rarely do you see a brain that’s top notch and poor eyesight. It’s good for the eyes, it’s good for the brain and if it’s good for the brain it’s good for the heart.”

Being healthy means being healthy all over. We don’t want to age without it—getting older is not what it’s cracked up to be if we can’t see, we can’t move, and we can’t remember.

Your Brain IS Your Health

For today’s growing population of baby boomers, cognitive health and health is one and the same. Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline is a grave concern as our longevity potential grows. Without affordable genetic testing, most of us simply don’t know to what degree we are predisposed to diseases of the brain.

All we know is that having our health tomorrow means making efforts to prevent brain disease, among other diseases of aging, today. And if you think about it, the idea that prevention could be possible is as exciting as a purse, a 5K, or the biggest celebration. When you believe that, you’ve got your own definition of good health, and that’s the most important step toward achieving it.

Healthy Today & Tomorrow 

According to Susan Davis, MS, RD, nutrition advisor to the Wild Blueberry Association of North America, “New research is really bearing out the idea that a diet rich in wild blueberries may help prevent cognitive decline.” AARP The Magazine named wild blueberries to its list of the most powerful disease-fighting foods. The research into wild blueberries and their positive effect on the brain in mounting. Areas of recent study include their potential for improving memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of cognitive impairment.

Notably, recent research shows wild blueberry supplemented diets could improve memory function and mood in older adults with early memory decline. The effect of a short-term blueberry-enriched diet on aged lab animals suggests that they may prevent and reverse a considerable degree of age-related object memory decline. And, in another study, researchers have found that the deeply colored berries enable “housekeeper” cells in the brain to remove biochemical debris, which is believed to contribute to the decline of mental functioning with age. It’s the natural pigments called anthocyanins that give the berries their deep-blue color as well as their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory power. They score twice as high in antioxidant capacity per serving as cultivated blueberries, making them the go-to berry for brain protection.

The bottom line is that something in a large blue bag in your freezer can be your definition of health. The intense benefit of wild blueberries is the best way we can think of to illustrate the potential of nutritional prevention. A small act of eating daily servings have the attention of nutritionists, scientists and consumers alike, especially those of retirement age and beyond. So put a little sizzle in your life (you’ll know it’s there). But do it today. And every day of your long, healthy life.

Read More: See the press release Wild Blueberries – Brain Food for Boomers? in MaineToday.


Can something delicious and readily available help protect you from cognitive decline? Babble attempts to answer with their post Blueberry Brain Boosters and enters their recipe for Fresh Blueberry Morning Bread, which is anything but medicinal, as evidence.