Blueberries and other dark-skinned fruits may play an important role in reducing cardiovascular disease risk factors in individuals who already are at higher risk.
Cara Frankenfeld, a professor in George Mason University’s Department of Global and Community Health, and Margaret Slavin, a professor in Nutrition and Food Studies, conducted a comprehensive review of studies that researched anthocyanins, the type of dietary bioactive thought to play a positive role in reducing cardiovascular health. An article on their review written by Taylor Wallace, an affiliate professor in Nutrition and Food Studies, is at MDPI.com.
Dietary bioactives aren’t crucial to human survival, but do have an impact on health.
“Anthocyanins are commonly found in the dark skin of fruits, vegetables, or other plant foods,” Frankenfeld said. It’s what gives these foods their deep coloring, Slavin said.
“There have been several studies in which anthocyanins were provided as an intervention to see if the compounds had an effect on risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as inflammation, blood lipid and blood pressure,” Frankenfeld said.
It’s thought that anthocyanins reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease risk factors by lowering LDL, known as the “bad” cholesterol. So, anthocyanin intake in the form of foods or supplements could be useful to those at risk, Frankenfeld said.
“Our work here provides justification for looking more at this relationship in larger and longer duration intervention studies,” Frankenfeld said.
Slavin has conducted her own research with anthocyanins in her food lab at George Mason.
“Anthocyanins break down easily in the presence of heat or light—not a good thing for foods that need to be cooked,” Slavin said.
To understand what that means for the final product, she studied the impact of baking on anthocyanin content in crackers made with black soybeans, she said.
The experiment is part of her effort to find shelf-stable, affordable and widely available anthocyanin-containing foods, she said.
“These qualities may be a more realistic way to enhance anthocyanin consumption in a broader population than fresh berries or dietary supplements,” she said. “Berries are very perishable and often expensive. It's not realistic to expect a large population to use supplements.”
They discovered that moderate temperature and moderate baking time is essential in maintaining the most anthocyanins in the finished product. Shorter baking times at high temperatures and the vice versa caused the loss of more anthocyanins, she said.
The results of the study can be reviewed here.