The Newest SuperFruit
Filed under: General Health, Nutrition
Lately there has been a lot of talk about these new esoteric superfruits that are commanding greater parts of the grocery store. They have been converted into multi-level marketing juice products that claim to cure everything that ails us. These “new” fruits range from noni, to goji berries, to the most famous of all, acai. While they may be all well and good, the juices from them are insanely priced for the benefit they offer. There is certainly no evidence that they are of any improvement over the plain wild blueberry, yet they cost significantly more.
What has been getting lost in the shuffle is the recent research on more common fruit that is finding them to be astoundingly potent. One example which I blogged about a while back is kiwifruit. Kiwifruit was compared to 27 other fruits and was found to be the most nutritionally dense of all of them. They are relatively cheap, portable, and can be eaten as is, skin and all like an apple. It is delicious I promise.
Some even more recent research has revealed another common fruit to be a new nutritional superstar. This new fruit? Plums. Yes, delicious, juicy, beautiful plums. Food scientist Dr. Luis Cisneros and plant breeder David Byrne judged more than 100 varieties of stone fruit, including plums, peaches and nectarines and found them to match or exceed the exalted blueberries in antioxidants and phytonutrients. According to Byrne, one inexpensive plum contains about the same amount of antioxidants as a handful of blueberries.
The good news doesn’t stop there. The researchers also tested the compounds in the fruit for it’s effects on breast cancer cells, in vitro (test tubes). The team found that the phytonutrients contained in the plums inhibited breast cancer cell growth without disrupting the growth of normal healthy cells. Granted this is in vitro, but still incredibly promising stuff.
Just one more piece of the puzzle to help convince women to stop smoking, drinking excessively, and consuming copious amounts of refined vegetable oils and to start eating pasture raised meats, healthy fats and tons of fresh fruits and veggies, including plums (and kiwifruit!). Put these steps into place and your risk of breast cancer drops dramatically.
In closing, you don’t need to spend all of your hard-earned income on expensive exotic fruit juices (though I do recommend some pomegranate), when you can achieve the same benefits with a daily dose of wild blueberries, plums, kiwifruit and other inexpensive and delicious fruit. Good news for the body, and the wallet.
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Posted on May 15th, 2009 by Brian St. Pierre
8 Comments
May 15th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Hi Brian,
Besides the cost/benefit factor, one of my biggest problems with those exotic fruit juices (including pomegranate)is that they are loaded with added sugar. Same goes for those increasingly popular immune-boosting yogurt drinks. I’ll sometimes just buy and eat a single whole pomegranate instead.
As for plums, I would add the dried version (prunes) to the list. Ever since I heard Mike Robertson recommend them, I’ve tried prunes and really like them. A couple in a small bag makes a good snack to keep in a desk drawer. Figs are another possibility.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Brian,
What do you think of things like dried goji berries, mulberries, and goldenberries from the Navitas Naturals line of products? While I realize that dried fruit needs to be eaten more sparingly and that these products are also not the cheapest thing out there, do you feel that these can be a tasty and useful addition/treat to add to the diet (especially in the spirit of increased variety)?
On a quick side note, I normally eat avocados a few times a week and toss the pit. Recently I picked up a Vita-Mix blender that can actually crush the pit with no problem. As far as you know, would the pit be able to be consumed if ground up with the rest of the avocado? If so, are there potential nutritional benefits “hidden” in the pit?
That was an extremely random question, so I apologize if it came too far out of left field.
Keep up the excellent work and the quality blog info coming!
May 18th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
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May 18th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Cool post! – The great thing about it is that plums are cheap in comparison to some of the rest of the “Super Fruits.”
May 26th, 2009 at 7:24 am
Bob,
Good points all around, though if you purchase POM wonderful pomegranate juice, it has no added sugar. It is straight juice. Most, if not all, research on pomegranate juice used POM wonderful, so it certainly has proved it’s worth in my book.
May 26th, 2009 at 7:29 am
Jack,
To answer your first question, yes, absolutely. No they aren’t cheap, but if cost isn’t a factor, have at it.
I don’t know of any hidden nutrients in the pit, but it probably has some nutrients as it is the seed that the avocado grows from. It also might be mildly toxic in large doses, so don’t go overboard.
Thanks for the kind words.
April 21st, 2010 at 8:59 am
[...] growth of breast cancer cells without affecting the healthy cells. I wrote an entire blog about the benefits of plums as well, and that is also not where I am headed with this [...]
October 23rd, 2010 at 6:10 pm
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