Set the juice loose! (Cranberry)

Member Name: collingwood21

Product:	Cranberry
Date:	19/10/02 (178 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Delicious sharp and dry taste, Mixes well with other juices and with vodka to make cocktails, Very good for you

Disadvantages: Not cheap, Some people may find the taste too sharp

Has anyone else out there noticed just how fashionable cranberries have become recently? A few years back, you would have struggled to get anything flavoured with this fruit (other than the sauce that appeared at Christmas time to go with your turkey that is), but now you can get a whole assortment of juices, squashes, presses, alcopops and cocktails that all contain cranberry. And I must admit that I have jumped onto this bandwagon too now by writing this review! :-)

So why has cranberry suddenly become so popular then? Well, personally I reckon that the health benefits of the fruit (which has recently become very well publicised after a series of studies into them) have a lot to do with it - but not everything. After all, we know that spinach is good for us too, but you don't here of anyone making that into cocktails, do you? (Mmmm, spinach martini - shaken not stirred, please!). The taste of cranberries has surely a part to play; I think that people are getting sick of everything being over sweetened and samey, whereas cranberry offers a sharp, dry taste that is startlingly different from the usual fruit flavours we encounter. Some may find the taste a bit too much for their delicate palates, for which I would recommend trying it mixed with sweeter juices (Ocean Spray make a lovely cranberry and raspberry mix, and J2O do it blended with orange). Drinking cranberry juice is a bit of an acquired taste, but it is worth sticking with, I promise.

And if you fancy a slightly naughtier mix, may I recommend it blended with vodka, apple juice and elderflower cordial to make a twist on the Seabreeze?

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So what are cranberries then?
Cranberries are very small, red fruit than look something like blackcurrants - they are from the same family as blueberries and bilberries. They are grown in bogs in parts of the USA (mainly Wisconsin, Massachusetts, New J
ersey, Washington and Oregon) and to a lesser extent in Chile. The fruit is harvested by flooding the bogs and having machines to beat the berries off their vines so that they float in the water - they are then skimmed off and taken to packing houses.
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If however you still do not like the taste of the juice (which I adore!), then you can always get the benefits of the fruit by taking capsules. These basically contained a dried concentrate of cranberries, are completely flavourless and each one gives the same benefit as drinking one glass of the juice. Personally, I would recommend the Seven Seas Cranberry Forte capsules, which I took before I developed a taste for drinking the juice on a regular basis - they can be found lurking on the shelves of Boots for £4.99 for a 50 capsule bottle. (In comparison BTW, juice costs between 85p and £1.20 for a 1 litre carton). They also have the added benefit of being sugar free, whereas most juices have added sugar to make the sharp taste more palatable.

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What about these health benefits I've been wittering on about then?
The big selling point of cranberries is that they have become widely known for their ability to prevent and treat urinary tract infections (UTIs). This isn't a new and startling finding though - they have been used as traditional folk remedies for hundreds of years, and women have long eaten them to prevent cystitis (the most common UTI, and extremely painful to have, I can tell you). As far back as the 1600s, there are also records of people using cranberries to treat stomach problems, blood conditions, vomiting, loss of appetite, scurvy, liver disease and even cancer - and Native Americans used them as part of wound dressings.

However, when antibiotics began to be widely used to treat cystitis - which is caused by t
he bacterium E Coli doing nasty things to your bladder and urinary tract - then traditional methods of treatment such as cranberries fell out of favour. Researchers in the 1960s went along with the new scientific methods of treatment by claiming that the effects of cranberries and their juice were inadequate to fight of infections. And so this attitude remained until 1994, when a Harvard University study of 153 women who repeatedly suffered from cystitis showed that "regular consumption" of cranberry juice reduced the frequency of attacks. Cranberries were slowly beginning to come back into favour.

A further study (this time by Rutgers State University which was published in 1998) confirmed this finding by discovering just how cranberries help cystitis sufferers. It was always thought that the juice raised the acidity level of the urine, thus killing off the E Coli that were causing the infection - however, it seems that what actually happens is that the cranberries have condensed tannins in them which bind with the bacteria and stop then from sticking to the wall of the bladder. Word soon began to spread about these findings, which has lead to the present level of popularity the fruit enjoys, especially amongst those women who find themselves prone to cystitis. I personally drink the juice regularly for just this reason, and since I have started doing so I have had not a single attack of cystitis, which is absolutley excellent!

But this isn't all! Dentists in Israel reckon drinking cranberry juice can help prevent plaque and gum disease, while scientists at Wisconsin University think it can help to lower levels of bad LDL cholesterol in the blood. And if that isn't enough for you, you can also get plenty of vitamins A and C and potassium from cranberries, and they may even prevent kidney stones.
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So have I convinced you to try cranberries
yet? :-)

To get the full health benefits of this fruit, the recommended intake is 2 to 3 glasses of juice or capsules per day. But you are warned that consuming more than 4 litres of the stuff daily could give you diarrhoea!

For more information, see:
http://www.northlandcran.com/hbessay.html
http://www.sangsters.com/nlm/Cran.shtml
http://www.healthreaction.com/web/articles/cra nberry.htm

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