Grown on vines in giant, sandy bogs, cranberries are one other fan favourite. The everyday American consumes 2.3 kilos of cranberries annually, most of it in juice kind. Solely about 5 % of cranberries produced in the USA are offered recent; the remaining 95 % are processed, largely into drinks.
The cranberry’s mouth-puckering acidity rivals that of a lemon or lime, and it’s one motive they’re hardly ever eaten recent and sometimes sweetened with sugar or honey.
The gelatinous canned cranberry sauce served on tens of millions of Thanksgiving tables was invented early within the twentieth century by a cranberry farmer determined to salvage his broken crop. He puréed the berries, canned them, and voilà! The remaining is culinary historical past.
Cranberries straddle two berry worlds — edible and medicinal. Together with anthocyanins, cranberries comprise an antimicrobial agent referred to as benzoic acid. Within the wild, benzoic acid might defend cranberries from the moisture of their rising setting. In people, the acid is believed to assist maintain micro organism from attaching to delicate tissue linings contained in the human physique, resembling within the urinary tract.
Urinary tract an infection (UTI) is among the many most typical forms of bacterial infections. In 2021, the authors of a giant meta-analysis on cranberries and UTIs concluded that common cranberry consumption lowered UTI threat by 30 % in folks liable to the infections. And cranberry juice was 35 % extra protecting towards UTI than cranberry capsules or tablets.
(For extra on cranberries, and the best way to put together them, see “Cranberries: Recipes, Methods, and Extra.”)
This was excerpted from “11 Berries to Eat and Their Well being Advantages” which was printed in Expertise Life.
