Hello, Kathie Alli here; Director of Nutritional Services at The Berkley Center.
Cherries are in season from June until September so I wanted to share some information that may be helpful.
There are two types of cherries, sweet and tart or sour cherries. The most popular type of sweet cherry is the Bing cherry, which is sold fresh in the grocery store. Cherries should be large (at least an inch in diameter), glossy, plump, hard, and dark colored. Reject soft, flabby, bruised, or sticky fruit. The stems should be fresh and green. Avoid cherries without stems. You can loosely pack unwashed cherries in plastic bags and store them in the refrigerator for up to a week.
Tart or sour cherries are canned and used in pies, dried into fruit snacks, and made into juice concentrate. Like most other fruits, cherries are fat-free, low in calories and sodium, and high in certain minerals and vitamins such as potassium, Vitamin C, and B-complex vitamins.
Sweet and tart cherries contain pigments called anthocyanins, antioxidants that give cherries their dark red color. Tart cherries are among the top fruits as far as antioxidant levels go. Tart cherry juice and dried tart cherries are even higher in antioxidants than blueberries and more powerful than Vitamin E. Anthocyanins have powerful anti-inflammatory properties and according to the American Chemical Society, eating 20 tart cherries (or drinking the equivalent in juice concentrate) a day could provide the same pain relief that aspirin or ibuprofen do.
So instead of reaching for the bottle, you can reach for a bunch of tart cherries which are easier on the liver for relieving pain of inflammation.
Recent Comments