FOOD FOCUS . . . BERRIES

A MAJOR study found that women who consumed at least one serving of blueberries and two servings of strawberries each week had slower rates of cognitive decline — by as much as two-and-a-half years — compared with those who didn’t eat berries.

This suggests that one easy and delicious dietary tweak — simply eating a handful of berries every day — may be enough to slow your brain’s ageing by more than two years.

Another study, this time of men and women, found that those who ate the most berries (of any sort — blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries and cranberries are all excellent) appeared significantly less likely to die of cardiovascular disease.

Frozen and dried varieties are available all year round, when fresh berries might not be, so make a point of sprinkling them on top of your breakfast, or blending them into a daily smoothie.

Cranberries are a particularly potent fruit, packed with beneficial plant compounds called polyphenols.

Beyond their antioxidant activity, polyphenols have been shown to protect isolated nerve cells by inhibiting the formation of the plaques and tangles that characterise the Alzheimer’s brain.

In theory, they could also ‘pull out’ metals which accumulate in certain brain areas and which may play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Much to the drug industry’s frustration, scientists have been unable to pin down the active ingredients at work in cranberries, giving them their special powers.

Extracts which concentrate individual components fail to match the diseasefighting effects of the berry as a whole — proof that it’s nearly always best to give preference to wholefoods.

But their natural tartness makes cranberries tricky to consume in any quantity. Of the fruit’s sales, 95 per cent are in the form of processed products, such as juices and sauces, which dilutes their beneficial effects. In fact, to get the same amount of plant compounds (anthocyanins) found in a single portion of fresh or frozen cranberries, you would have to drink 4 litres of cranberry juice, eat 840g of dried cranberries, or make your way through 26 jars of sauce.

Why not try my delicious Pink Juice cranberry cocktail instead? Simply blitz in a blender or food processor one handful of fresh or frozen cranberries with 500ml of water and eight teaspoons of erythritol (a natural sweetener) and you get a wholefood drink with 25 times fewer calories and at least eight times the phytonutrient content of shop-bought cranberry juice.