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Overview
Blackcurrants don’t just taste delicious, eating them can provide your body with vital nutrients and help to protect your body against a myriad of ills including cardiovascular disease and ageing.
Eat a Rainbow!
We all know that eating 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day is the optimum way to keep our bodies healthy and get essential nutrients into our diet. But this is often easier said than done! By visualising this task as a rainbow, it may help to keep healthy eating on track by eating a wide variety of different coloured fruits and vegetables.
Blackcurrants are full of health promoting antioxidants, called anthocyanins, which give blackcurrants their distinctive dark purple colour. The darker the blackcurrant, the more anthocyanins it contains and the better it is for you. British blackcurrants are grown and bred especially for their deep colour, making them extra good for you.
Blackcurrants are also especially rich in Vitamin C - containing more than three times as much as an orange! They can even help prevent joint inflammation, eyestrain and urinary infections.
Find out more about how eating blackcurrants can help keep you healthy.
Cardiovascular Health
A high intake of fruit and vegetables has been linked to a reduced risk of heart disease. For example, it is well-known that the flavonoid-rich diet of the French, who drink a lot of red wine, is good for you (Bibliography Ref: 63, 64, 65). Blackcurrants are a natural, readily available and rich source of flavonoids.
How do flavonoids reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease?
Eating foods and drinks that are rich in flavonoids can benefit the cardiovascular system in a number of ways. Studies have shown that drinking wine or juices rich in flavonoids helps to improve the function of your blood vessels (Bibliography Ref: 66, 67, 68). Scientists have also shown that flavonoids can reduce blood stickiness in both laboratory tests (Bibliography Ref: 69) and in humans (Bibliography Ref: 70, 71). This means reducing the chance of forming small blood clots which can injure the blood vessel lining and stops them working.
As well as stop blood vessels working properly, small blood clots release harmful chemicals that can increase the formation of bad cholesterol (also known as oxidised low density lipoprotein), which sticks to the blood vessel walls. Eventually this can lead to a narrowing of the arteries, which will prevent the blood flowing around the body efficiently and could lead to increased blood pressure.
What scientific evidence is there?
Laboratory tests have found that flavonoids reduce the rate at which bad cholesterol is formed (Bibliography Ref: 72, 73). Whilst some volunteer studies have shown that this occurs in the body after people have consumed wine or juices rich in flavonoids (Bibliography Ref: 74, 75, 76), not all studies have shown this effect.
When a mixture of blackcurrants, lingonberries and bilberries were eaten by 20 men in Finland, scientists observed that the rate of bad cholesterol formation was slightly reduced (Bibliography Ref: 77). In another study, blackcurrant juice helped the function of blood vessels in rats (Bibliography Ref: 78).
A further study has shown improved blood flow in the forearm after consumption of blackcurrant anthocyanins. This also led to some reduction in shoulder muscle stiffness after a typing exercise (Bibliography Ref: 79).
However, more studies are required to confirm these benefits for blackcurrants.
Are scientists doing any more research to prove this?
A feeding study will try and find out just how protective blackcurrants are against heart disease (blueberry and water will also be consumed as experimental controls).
The study will be run by Dr D Stewart, SCRI, and Professor Jill Belch, University of Dundee Medical School, and sponsored by Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland.
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/medden/
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