Fresh Cranberries Are Good Any Time Of Year
During the holidays, especially as Thanksgiving gets close, you see bags and bags of fresh cranberries in the produce section of most grocery stores. Fresh cranberries are harvested in the fall months, so are at the peak of distributions.
No doubt that the cranberry is great for Thanksgiving, this tart little fruit deserves to be part of meals year round. Cranberries health benefits make them a great addition to your diet.
Consider The Benefits Of The Cranberry
Fresh cranberries have a lot going for them. Off the bat, consider they’re rich in fiber. Getting more fiber in the diet is a good thing. It’s a fact of life that your digestive system needs plenty of fiber to work well.
But there’s more health benefits with eating cranberries. The reason they are so tart is they’re rich in ascorbic acid. Vitamin C and ascorbic acid are one and the same thing.
What’s so great about vitamin C? Well, besides helping mitigate the effects of the common cold, it does all these things:
- protection against immune system deficiencies
- cardiovascular disease
- prenatal health problems
- eye disease, and even
- skin wrinkling.
Additional Health Benefits of Cranberries
Besides being full of vitamin C, cranberries also contain vitamin K, manganese and several phytonutrients.
And for a juice high in antioxidants, think cranberry juice. It’s also true that cranberry juice also helps urinary tract infections.
One of the researchers studying vitamin C, Mark Moyad, MD, MPH, of the University of Michigan, says, “The more we study vitamin C, the better our understanding of how diverse it is in protecting our health, from cardiovascular, cancer, stroke, eye health [and] immunity to living longer.”
Eat Those Cranberries!
Cranberries are one of the few fruits native to the United States. Even though fresh cranberries have the most beneficial nutrients, frozen cranberries are nearly as good. When cranberries come on sale after the holidays, that’s a great time to buy a bunch and pop them in your freezer for later use.
Additionally, cranberry juice and dried cranberries are available year round.
Whatever way you choose to eat cranberries, they’re good nutrition. Cranberries are a super easy health food to include in your diet year round.
