Blackberries are a great accompaniment during summer. They enrich our salads, juices, and oatmeal and also make these more delicious.
This sweet-sour fruit is nutritious and can serve as an anytime snack too.
Blackberries: a wonderful fruit
Blackberries are easily available in grocery shops and supermarkets in North America and Europe. They get exported to other continents and therefore are available there too.
One can obtain them fresh at the farmer’s markets. And if we have good know-how about agriculture, we can grow them at home in the backyard and reap their health benefits.
Additionally, frozen varieties of these berries are available perennially in shops.
Blackberries ripening on the plant (Source: Wikipedia)These berries are dark purple with several bumps on the surface. These are seeds with pulp around them. They taste sweet and sour and can be enjoyed any time of the day.
When ripe, they can be eaten as such or can be mixed with salads and breakfast oats for enrichment and taste. They can be a part of cocktails too.
Nutritional values of these berries
The berries have low calories and sugars. One cup of blackberries provides 60 calories. They have 14 g of carbs. And the fiber in them is 7.5 g. They have good amounts of calcium and magnesium along with vitamin C.
Like other fruits and berries, these berries are rich in antioxidant polyphenols, including anthocyanin. The latter gives the fruit its characteristic color.
The blackberry fruit is delicious with a sweet and sour taste (Source: Healthline)Health benefits of these berries
These berries are classic and can help a person lose weight. They are fat-free and sodium free. This is an advantage for weight losers.
And the low sugars and calories contribute to helping to shed excess body fat. Its fiber content induces satiety and hence controls food intake.
Vitamin C boosts immunity. A cup of these berries gives 30 mg of vitamin C. This meets 30% of the requirements in a day.
The anthocyanin in these berries improves cognition and memory. Attention span and psychomotor activity also show a rise. Therefore these berries are recommended for brain health.
Salad containing blackberry fruit (Source: Simply sated)These berries have low sugars. Their glycemic index is low. Hence people with high blood glucose and impaired glucose tolerance get benefits from their eating.
Their blood sugar will not show a drastic rise after consuming blackberries. Thus, these berries are a good fruit option for diabetics and prediabetic people.
The added nutrients and antioxidants could help these people in keeping their sugar under control and also better control infection and wound healing. The latter two are disturbed and deranged in diabetics.
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These berries support a healthy gut microbiome. This impacts immune function, gut health, and mental well-being. Additionally, these berries reduce body inflammation.
Therefore, it keeps under check chronic inflammatory conditions such as heart disease, atherosclerosis, stroke, cancer, etc.