Tag: berries

berries and heart attacks

Berries

Berries

Berries seem to lower womens’ risk of heart attacks. From New York Times Well blog:

Beginning in 1991, researchers at Harvard tracked more than 100,000 women ages 25 to 42 with food-frequency questionnaires every four years through 2009. They recorded 405 fatal and nonfatal heart attacks in them over the period. The study was published last week in the journal Circulation.

After adjusting for many dietary, behavioral and physiological risk factors, the scientists found that compared with those below the 20th percentile in anthocyanin intake, those above the 80th percentile were 32 percent less likely to have a heart attack. Other flavonoids were not significantly associated with reduced risk.

Women who ate more than three servings of blueberries or strawberries a week — the most common anthocyanin-rich foods consumed — had a 34 percent lower risk than those who ate less.

shiny berries

 

The fruit from the African plant Pollia condensata is shiny like a Christmas tree ornament.  It acheives this brilliant coloring because its cells have a spiralled arrangement that reflects light. The berries are the shiniest living things on the planet.

As explained by Ed Yong:

Under the microscope, Vignolini saw that the outer part of the fruit consists of three to four layers of thick-walled cells (labelled “1″ in the image below). Each cell contains yet more layers, made of cellulose fibres. The fibres all run parallel to one another, but each layer is slightly rotated against the one above it, producing an elegant spiral.

As light hits the top layer, some gets reflected and the rest passes through. The same thing happens at the next layer, and the next, and so on. Provided the layers are exactly the right distance apart, the reflected beams of light amplify each other to produce exceptionally strong colours. The technical term is “multilayer interference”. Or alternatively: “Ooh, shiny!”

Read more about this fascinating berry at PNAS.

 

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