Big red

Life is just a bowl of cherries

By Ashley Griffin Gartland

March 22, 2007

Last year, I read SuperFoods Rx: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life, and immediately started adding spinach, fish, yogurt, soy, and oats to my diet, hoping to reap the health benefits of these so-called superfoods. Sometimes I crafted entire meals around them. But I never thought to include cherries.

Until now, that is. The recently released Cherry Nutrition Report touts the health benefits of America’s most underutilized stone fruit. Cherries, it turns out, are packed with antioxidants, and studies suggest that cherries may help reduce inflammation, ease the pain of arthritis and gout, offer protection against heart disease and some cancers, and reduce the risk of diabetes and insulin-resistance syndrome.

Although the report is sponsored by the Cherry Marketing Institute, an organization funded by North American tart-cherry growers and processors, the “Choose Cherries” website does provide a great deal of accurate information about the little red orbs. Superfood or no, cherries are delicious, and now I’m just waiting for their brief local season to arrive in June.