Blueberry juice on my mind

My wife eats a ton of blueberries every morning, piled high on her low-fat cherry, peach or raspberry yogurt, and I don’t mind telling you how much this suddenly scares me. Don’t misunderstand me. I know blueberries are full of those wonderful antioxidants and I, myself, try to eat a lot of foods that contain these goodies. I hope the berries keep her healthy for decades and decades, and so far so good. But what I’m afraid is that her memory is going to get better and better, as mine gets, well, you know the word I’m searching for here. The problem is that I don’t eat blueberries very often and a new study finds that blueberry juice improves your memory.

Already, I have to turn to Eileen when I can’t remember what our plans are for this Saturday or next Saturday. She always gives me a smile and a knowing shake of the head and then reminds me who we’re going to dinner with or which concert we will be enjoying. But I have a tiny glimmer of hope. The study, featured in last week’s ACS PressPac, cites drinking blueberry juice but doesn’t specifically allude to eating blueberries. Yes, I know this is a stretch…

The researchers say that their study establishes a basis for comprehensive human clinical trials to determine whether blueberries really deserve their growing reputation as a memory enhancer. A report on the study appears in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.

Robert Krikorian and colleagues point out that previous studies in laboratory animals suggest that eating blueberries may help boost memory in the aged. Until now, however, there had been little scientific work aimed at testing the effect of blueberry supplementation on memory in people.

In the study, one group of volunteers in their 70s with early memory decline drank the equivalent of 2-2 l/2 cups of a commercially available blueberry juice every day for two months. A control group drank a beverage without blueberry juice. The blueberry-juice group showed significant improvement on learning and memory tests, the scientists say. “These preliminary memory findings are encouraging and suggest that consistent supplementation with blueberries may offer an approach to forestall or mitigate neurodegeneration,” said the report.

The research involved scientists from the University of Cincinnati, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Canadian department of agriculture. To read more, go to blueberry juice.

Image courtesy of iStock