Blueberries - A Brain Food

Mention blueberries around scientists, and you’re sure to hear the name of Dr. James Joseph. Joseph is lead scientist in the Laboratory of Neuroscience at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. His special interest is what we should eat if we want to keep our marbles intact as we grow older. And it’s largely because of Joseph that blueberries now have a firmly established reputation as a memory-protecting food.

Blueberries Are Brain Food
In Joseph’s lab, he’s got something he calls the Rat Olympics. He tests motor function and memory function with mazes and assorted tests for muscle strength and coordination. Around middle age, rats start showing the same kinds of decline in performance that humans do. But what Joseph’s studies show is that when you feed the lab animals extracts of blueberries, wonderful things start happening; or, more accurately, bad things don’t happen.

Bad things meaning mental deterioration. And loss of coordination and balance. Gone. Those rats that chowed down on the blueberries behaved like young studs. In Joseph’s lab, they’d found the Rat Fountain of Youth.

Blueberries contain compounds like anthocyanin that are antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. And inflammation and oxidative stress are involved in virtually every major killer disease: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, and heart disease, not to mention “run-of-the-mill” conditions of aging like arthritis. These compounds by themselves would be enough to land blueberries on anyone’s list of superfoods. But the blueberries do even more. They actually help neurons in the brain communicate with one another more effectively.

BLUEBERRIES KEEP YOUR MEMORY SHARP
“Old neurons are kind of like old married couples,” Joseph says. “They don’t talk to each other so much any more.” Memory goes down, and the “processing” necessary for coordination and balance will tend to decline. The technical term for this communication is “signaling,” and special compounds in blueberries called polyphenols actually “turn on” the signals. “Not only can you get one neuron to talk to another more efficiently, but you can actually enable the brain to grow new neurons,” Joseph explained in an interview.

Blueberries are the ultimate memory food. Animal studies have demonstrated that daily consumption of blueberries dramatically slows impairments in motor coordination and memory that are the usual accompaniments of aging. What’s more, they may help lower blood cholesterol and promote urinary health.

Bilberries, a close European cousin of the blueberry, have been shown to promote eye health and protect against glaucoma and cataract progression. In fact, wild blueberries are called “the vision fruit” in Japan, because they have very high concentrations of anthocyanins, natural antioxidants and anti-inflammatories whose benefits 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 sixty-five.

Blueberries Are the Highest-Scoring Fruit of All Time
Then there are all those antioxidants and antiinflammatory compounds, which help fight against cardiovascular disease. Blueberries have been tested to have one of the highest ORAC values of any food in the world. What does that mean? Well, ORAC, which stands for oxygen radical absorbance capacity, is a rating system for antioxidant power. Scientists test how well all the different phytochemicals and antioxidants in a given food perform together, and then give the food a rating based on that performance. It’s easy to understand if you think of a sports team. A really good team is not just about how good the players are individually, just like a superfood is not just about which nutrients it contains. In both cases, it’s about how well the elements work together as a group. And that’s what the ORAC rating tells you: how much protection and value antioxidants and phytochemicals give you as a group in a particular food. The highest- scoring fruit of all time? Blueberries.

Just recently, in the May 4, 2005, issue of the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, it was reported that blueberries contain a beneficial compound called pterostilbene. Pterostilbene’s lipid-lowering ability was superior to both resveratrol (the antiaging compound also found in grapes) and the prescription drug Ciprofibrate. On a cellular level, it works much like resveratrol in regulating fatty acid metabolism and fats in the bloodstream— and it helps prevent the deposition of plaque in the arteries.
Need more reasons to eat blueberries? How about fighting cancer? A University of Illinois study tested different fruits for the presence of a particular flavonoid that inhibits a cancer-promoting enzyme. Of all the fruits tested, wild blueberries showed the greatest anticancer activity.

Fresh or Frozen, You Choose

Best of all, you can get all these amazing health benefits by just adding 1/2 cup a day of wild or frozen blueberries to your diet. No studies have been done to date comparing fresh to frozen to canned berries, but virtually all forms of the fruit have essential anthocyanins and proanthocyanins, making them a genuine health bargain. In fact, all of Joseph’s studies were done using frozen berries, which, last time I looked, were pretty inexpensive and available in any grocery store freezer.
Throw them on a salad, in a blender with a protein powder, or, best of all—my personal favorite—eat them frozen with a dollop of yogurt. The yogurt sort of freezes upon making contact with the ice-cold blueberries, making the resulting blend the most delicious, healthy “dessert” you can imagine.