Strawberry Splurge

“If some is good, more is better.” Generally, this tends not to be true.

For instance, exercise is a good thing, but it shouldn’t be assumed that if 45 minutes on the treadmill is good, 90 minutes is better. Or if hitting the weights for an hour is good, then two hours will really pack on the muscle. In actuality, if you don’t supply your body with the amount of nutrients and calories the body needs to compensate for what’s burned, too much exercise can be counterproductive to strength training; the body will actually eat away at your hard-earned muscle for energy.

Similarly, fiber is a good thing, but the body can only absorb so much of it. Any fiber the body does not need is…well…you know.

So with all that said, how does this apply to the nutrients and vitamins we get from nutritionally-potent fruits like strawberries? Does the body only absorb so many of their nutrients? Well, contrary to the aforementioned examples, there appears to be no “cut off” in the amount of antioxidants the body doesn’t use for its own “fruitful” purposes (pardon the pun).

Researchers discovered this by having 12 participants go on something of a strawberry splurge. In one week, two of their meals included a 3.5 ounce glass of blended strawberries. Two weeks later, two of their meals included another glass of blended strawberries, only this time the glass was 7 ounces. Two weeks later – sensing a pattern? – another glass of blended strawberries would accompanied two of their meals, only this time their strawberry smoothie was 14 ounces. To ensure other foods didn’t increase the body’s absorption of strawberries’ nutrients, the participants ate the same foods in the study period, as prescribed by the researchers.

What the researchers discovered was that unlike fiber – where only so much is absorbed – the higher the amount of strawberries consumed, the more the body’s tissues absorbed antioxidant compounds like anthocyanin, which, among other things, give berries their color (read more about anthocyanins in my article “It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Anthocyanin”).

This is an exciting development for all those who can’t eat enough strawberries, not to mention the strawberry farmer who can’t sell enough. The researchers’ results, which have since been published in the Journal of Nutrition, will give farmers a better idea about how to cross breed certain kinds of strawberries to form a super strawberry – one particularly high in antioxidants.

Now, do I advise you start eating quarts full of strawberries? Of course not. Calories still count. The same goes for high fiber foods. Further, jumping head first into a diet high in fiber will cause a lot of gastrointestinal discomfort, particularly if you’re an avid exerciser. But that’s another topic for another day and misses the point.

The point to be taken from this study is the body absorbs as many of strawberries’ antioxidants that you throw at it. So start eating more of them…just don’t go crazy. Because despite this finding, the cliché remains true: too much of anything is not a good thing.