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Best Berries

Compared to popular fruits such as apples, bananas, and mangoes, which of the hundreds of different berries tested have the most and least antioxidant power: blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, crowberries, dog rose berries, grapes, raspberries, strawberries, or Tahitian noni juice?

January 9, 2012 |
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Best Berries, 5.0 out of 5 based on 7 ratings

Sources Cited

Carlsen MH, Halvorsen BL, Holte K, Bøhn SK, Dragland S, Sampson L, Willey C, Senoo H, Umezono Y, Sanada C, Barikmo I, Berhe N, Willett WC, Phillips KM, Jacobs DR Jr, Blomhoff R. The total antioxidant content of more than 3100 foods, beverages, spices, herbs and supplements used worldwide. Nutr J. 2010 Jan 22;9:3.

Sun X, Seeberger J, Alberico T, Wang C, Wheeler CT, Schauss AG, Zou S. Açai palm fruit (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) pulp improves survival of flies on a high fat diet. Exp Gerontol. 2010 Mar;45(3):243-51. Epub 2010 Jan 18.

Acknowledgements

Images thanks to Scott Bauer, topicchio, USDA, Jeff Kubina, Fir0002, Cjboffoli, NIH via Wikimedia Commons, and Sonja Þórey Þórsdóttir.

Transcript

A plant based diet protects against chronic oxidative-stress related diseases but which plant foods are the best? Berries are the healthiest fruits, and this study analyzed more than a hundred different berries and berry products.

Just to give a sense of scale, this is how many antioxidants are in America’s two most popular fruits bananas, and apples. Now the most popular fruit in the world is mango, which does better. But none of these are a match for the berries: here’s a cup of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, cranberries, and blackberries.

That’s pretty much where most of us have to leave it unless you have access to crowberries. Or—whoa!—dog rose berries. But getting back to what you can actually buy in a store, you see I keep changing the scale over here on the right.

What about goji berries—I’ll cover them in an upcoming dried fruit video. What about a shot of Tahitian noni juice? It doesn’t even make it up to banana; and sadder than even that, is a cup of green grapes, which technically are berries, but nutritionally are the Wonder Bread of the fruit kingdom.

What about acai berries? There was actually an acai study that caught my eye last year in the journal of experimental gerontology. Acai fruit pulp improves survival on a high fat diet. I thought how interesting until I reread the title more closely. Acai improves the survival of flies on a high fat diet. Why would you even want to do that? I imagine the researchers out collecting flies from some fast food dumpster.

Unfortunartely acai wasn’t tested in this study. Hopefully they’ll come back next year and make it the 3,140th.

In the meanwhile I encourage everyone to eat berries every day, to always have bags of frozen berries in their freezer. Whichever ones you like but, as we learned in this study, we can get more than twice the bang for our buck choosing blackberries, for example, over strawberries.

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by MaryAnn Allison.

To help out on the site please email <a
href= “mailto:volunteer@nutritionfacts.org” >volunteer@nutritionfacts.org

Dr. Michael Greger

Doctor's Note

Please feel free to post any ask-the-doctor type questions here in the comments section and I’d be happy to try to answer them. Check out the other videos on fruits and don't miss all the videos on ranking foods. And there are 1,449 subjects covered in the rest of my videos–please feel free to explore them!

Also, check out my associated blog posts for some more context: Acai to Zucchini: antioxidant food rankings, Coffee Caveats, Fighting Inflammation with Food Synergy, and 98% of American Diets Potassium Deficient

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/mgreger/ Michael Greger M.D.

    Please feel free to post any ask-the-doctor type questions here in the comments section and I’d be happy to try to answer them. Check out the other videos on fruits and don’t miss all the videos on ranking foods. And there are 1,449 subjects covered in the rest of my videos–please feel free to explore them!

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/bpcveg/ BPC

    So does this mean that you favor only purchasing foods with the highest antioxidant power (e.g. never buying strawberries when blackberries can be bought instead)?

    I wonder if any controlled studies have been performed on humans that show that an increased intake of foods with higher antioxidant power necessarily improves human lifespan or health? Please refer to these studies..thanks.

    Also I am wondering if there is any nutritional benefit that comes from eating a mixture of berries (e.g. eating a mix of strawberries,raspberries and blackberries rather than the equivalent amount of pure blackberries), despite lower average antioxidant power than pure blackberries?

    • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/mgreger/ Michael Greger M.D.

      There are indeed just the kinds of studies you mentioned recently published and I have some videos coming out on them–stay tuned!

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/paul3917/ paul3917

    You seem to be stressing the of anti-oxidant rich foods because it is believed that they “prevent against chronic oxidative stress-related diseases” which I take to me diseases related to aging. But according to a study you can find at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16677102 , “Available studies do not support the hypothesis that antioxidants control the rate of aging” Apparently, antioxidants are too slow acting to prevent free radical damage in vivo, although this may not be true of the body’s own antioxidants such as glutathione,catalase and SOD. So, a better strategy might be a diet or supplements which improve the body’s status of these.
    Another paper by the same authors at
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22006472
    suggests that a methionine restriction diet may be more effective in preventing free radical damage. Just the same, I’m planning on continuing to eat berries every day.

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/vegan-for-life/ Vegan for Life

    I have started snacking on frozen cranberries. Is there a nutritional difference from fresh cranberries?

    • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/mgreger/ Michael Greger M.D.

      I talk about the effect of cranberry processing in my video Pink Juice With Green Foam but I haven’t seen a direct fresh to frozen comparison.

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/vegan-for-life/ Vegan for Life

    Thanks, I will check that out. It may answer a question I have about juicing, namely why juice at all, and instead simply eat the whole fruit.

  • http://veganlinda.blogspot.com/ Veganlinda

    Have you seen any studies about mulberries? My kids are interested since mulberries are seen as “trash trees” in our urban setting, but my kids love them. I looked up the nutrition data and they look great, especially high in iron.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003023308557 Louise White

    I wonder where Cherry rank in this study.   I daily use a combo of frozen cherry, wild blueberry & mango in my smoothies. But I love cherry over all fruit.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003023308557 Louise White

    Is pomegranate a berry? How does it rank against cranberry, debating switching from pom juice to making your pink juice instead.

  • Ajeng

    I love tea and drink lots of tea. Almost every day drinking tea after the meal. From what I learned, many tea contains anti-oxidants. I want to ask, is there any side effects from my habit who like to drink tea? _John, Please see my personal site about moslem fashion called gamis batik

  • Steve

    Please help me dr. I have two small
    hot tubs     at home. I am very pleased with
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    do at home with his family. One of the diseases
    caused by the hot tub is hot tub rush. Please
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