Why Eat Berries? Food First!

LEAH: As usual, I was doing a little bit of research before, you know, just in prep for this episode. 

Tina: Okay, so can I just say, as usual, I didn't do much. Carry on.

LEAH: Well, I came upon this information and it was kind of mind blowing and I think I knew it, but I must have pushed it back into the archives of my brain. Did you know a raspberry is not a berry? 

Tina: Technically, but I can't say I would like rattle that off. Maybe if I was playing a trivial game, I might pull it out, but kind of knew, but I didn't really think about it.

LEAH: So what we think of as berries, culinary berries, berries that we eat, um, they're not botanically berries. So, 

Tina: yeah. 

LEAH: Like true berries. Are like a fleshy fruit that have like the seeds inside but not like a pit. That's something different and not with a core because that's something different but like A watermelon, cucumbers, 

Tina: technically berries, 

LEAH: bananas.

That's a berry. 

Tina: That's why it's hard to have a conversation with a botanist. 

LEAH: Oh, I hate talking to botanists. I don't know what I'm saying. I'm just saying that I really don't hate talking to botanists. 

I would actually be fascinated because, yeah, so. What we're talking about today are the health benefits of 

berries, 

Tina: culinary berries, 

So my understanding is that strawberries, raspberries, all these berries that have seeds on the outside, they were named. Before botany was really even a science and categorized plants as they do.

LEAH: Cause those 

are aggregate fruits and it all has to do with where the fruit comes from and how many ovaries the flower has and whatnot. Like that's, it's all super technical. 

Tina: yeah, so isn't it, I mean, for botanicals, like, isn't it that there is a. A skin of flesh and more than one seed inside is kind of like the rough definition of a berry in botany.

LEAH: I think, yeah, that's, that's a good, that's a, that's a, that's a good summary. 

Tina: And I think it led back to your ova. I think it has to be one flower, not several flowers. then it's a berry. So that's, that, that's so weird because that means bananas. Bananas. 

LEAH: It's banana berries. 

Tina: which is, you know, not even remotely what we think about when we think of berries.

LEAH: because people don't even really think of bananas having seeds, but they do. 

Tina: Well, and then we all know the tricky one, tomatoes. Right? 

LEAH: They would be a berry. 

Tina: Anyways, it doesn't have a lot to do with the kitchen.

LEAH: So today we're talking about kitchen berries.

Tina: Yes, things that end in the word berry. Blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, strawberry. Those are the ones we're talking about. 

 I'm Dr Tina Kaczor and as Leah likes to say I'm the science-y one

LEAH: and I'm Dr Leah Sherman and on the cancer inside

Tina: And we're two naturopathic doctors who practice integrative cancer care 

LEAH: But we're not your doctors

Tina: This is for education entertainment and informational purposes only

LEAH: do not apply any of this information without first speaking to your doctor

Tina: The views and opinions expressed on this podcast by the hosts and their guests are solely their own 

LEAH: Welcome to the cancer pod 

Tina: Hey, Tina. Hey, 

LEAH: Leah. So this is probably going to be like the most delicious episode that we've done 

Tina: so far. Mm hmm. We'll probably break for lunch after recording this. 

LEAH: And maybe we'll have some berries with it.

Tina: There's a really good chance, actually. It's 

LEAH: not really berry season, but I do have frozen berries in my freezer. 

Tina: Mm 

hmm. Me 

LEAH: too. And the nutritional content is quite good. For people who are like, well, there aren't any good berries in season right now, go for the frozen 

Tina: ones. Yeah, ideally. If you can buy them locally and in season and freeze them yourself, then you can lock in the most nutrients.

That would be the ideal scenario. I don't think we all have access to that at all times, but it's also the most economical scenario because berries tend to be less expensive when they're in season because they all come out at once. Or 

LEAH: you can go to your local Costco and just buy a big bag of them. 

Tina: Like I do.

I think we all do that to some extent, right? I mean, we have to. We can't all plan perfectly. But I don't give the ideal scenario, and then the reality is we mostly get them from the store. 

LEAH: there was an organic blueberry farm near where I lived in northern Indiana, and 

You could either go pick the berries or you could just buy bags of berries that were already frozen. And yeah, anyways, um, I think people for the most part know that berries are healthy. They might not know why. And so we'll go into a little bit of that today. And we'll talk about some berries that maybe people aren't all that familiar 

Tina: with.

Yeah. And I'm, I'm a very practical person when it comes to this. So I'm going to not be too technical on exactly which berry is best for cancer care. I mean, there, there are some components, you know, phytochemicals, chemical components within plants that are specifically anti cancer that we know and encapsulate sometimes.

And so we'll talk about that. Things like elligic acid. But, um, berries are good for you. So I'm not going to say any are not good in a general sense. 

LEAH: Well, the ones that are poisonous are not good. So if you're just foraging through a forest, I would just advise not just going like, Ooh, berry and eating it.

Tina: I don't think any of our listeners would just forage willy nilly. Willy nilly. 

LEAH: Um, no, but I just, you know, I was looking up to see. If there was anything contraindicated with berries, and perhaps some people might think so with treatment, but other than picking a poisonous berry, if you, maybe if you eat too many.

You might get digestive upset, but yeah, so we're starting off with the cautions, throwing the cautions away. And now let's talk about the fun and the benefits. 

Tina: Where should we start? 

LEAH: So I, well, I guess just like the, the nutrients, right. We could start with they're rich in. Vitamin C. Mm hmm. And potassium, magnesium, fiber would be a big one.

Mm hmm. 

Sure. They are 

pretty well tolerated. 

Tina: Yeah, I guess the only, I'm thinking of my patient populations and the only people that, did have to be concerned were people who knew they had diverticulosis. Right. Um, because sometimes certain sizes of seeds from the berry can flare up a diverticulitis episode.

So. Other than that, I think that was the only kind of watch out for berries, and then maybe figure out which berries they do tolerate as opposed to which ones they don't tolerate because it usually has to do with the size of the seed. 

LEAH: I do remember having patients who would say that they couldn't do.

strawberries because of the seeds. I actually have had patients who have never had berries before. Well, they haven't had culinary berries. They've technically had berries because they'll eat bananas, but they just, it just wasn't something that they grew up with. So it wasn't something in their, in their diet world, in their dietary intake.

So 

Tina: yeah, maybe the most, um, likely to have been eaten by Pretty universally by everyone is, uh, grapes, like grape jelly, grape jam. Concord grapes count. 

And plus it's very accessible. Even if they don't eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, um, it's very accessible to have grapes or jellies and jams. 

LEAH: So let's talk about that next. So there is something that is kind of universal to berries. And those are like the flavonoid polyphenol, like all of those benefits that come from the colors.

And not all berries are red and blue. You also have orange and yellow berries. But yeah, let's, let's start with kind of like the, the red blue benefits of things like blueberries, blackberries, Marian berries, if you're from the Pacific Northwest. 

Tina: Yeah. And you know, you know, my. Saying, and I always say it is, if it's got enough of the pigment of the anthocyanins or anthocyanidins, which is the red to blue spectrum in it, if it's going to stain your shirt for example, or your tablecloth or whatever, then it it's got a good amount in there.

Um, so that includes the berries. It also includes sometimes the petals, you know, of the plant. Sometimes people put the petals on a salad or something. So these anthocyanins are concentrated in the berry and the flower often. 

LEAH: So I think that the polyphenol that most people think of is resveratrol. 

Tina: Yeah.

Resveratrol. Especially, you were just talking about grapes, resveratrol is very high in. The purple and red grape. So resveratrol is a type of polyphenol. So polyphenol is an umbrella term. So there are really four classes of polyphenols. That's still beans, which is resveratrol, 

flavanols, which is where the anthocyanins are under, lignans. and the last class is phenolic acids. So that's like cinnamonic acid kind of stuff. So it's a little bit kind of an obscure class that we don't talk about much. Mostly what we talk about is flavonoids. The word polyphenol really, like I said, is an umbrella term. So as an umbrella term underneath the category of polyphenol is a lot of different subcategories. And that's where we say words like bioflavonoids, anthocyanins, phenolic compounds. So we, we use a lot of words under that term.

So polyphenol really is. under the heading. phytochemicals, plant chemicals, polyphenols. I know it's technical, chemically, but polyphenol simply means many phenolic groups, poly, many, phenol. So polyphenols is a huge class of compounds, technically. it is confusing for the lay public because I think these terms are thrown around in marketing and I think they're thrown around just in general.

LEAH: And resveratrol is something that we had talked about. In our alcohol episode, because we talked about the health benefits of wine, And in that episode, I think you even mentioned that peanuts are a good source of resveratrol. And when I was looking things up for this episode, I came across that red sorghum.

Which is a grain. It's a gluten free grain. But anyways red sorghum also has pretty good 

source of resveratrol 

Tina: and I want to say for those peanuts We're not just talking regular peanut butter. It's the red skin on a Spanish peanut specifically So it's that redness.

LEAH: So even better, even better. Resveratrol also, uh, not only because I think it's popular in the cancer world, but it's also kind of popular for cardiovascular health, which I guess berries 

Tina: across the 

LEAH: board. Yes. Have been shown to be beneficial for heart health, reducing, The risk of heart attack by helping with blood pressure and whatnot.

Tina: Yeah. And I wrote on this topic, a couple different articles in 2023 and in each of those articles that it had to do with how. So anthocyanins can lessen the damage from a high fat meal. And so one of them had to do with apple juice and bergamot, bergamot as a, type of tea type of plant that's high in anthocyanins.

And the other was basically a juice, fresh mixed anthocyanins. And in each case, What it showed was there was a reduction in the levels of cholesterol and LDL right after a high fat meal. The high fat meal they challenged people with, the one they used in this experiment, consisted of an English muffin. A sausage, an egg, 

LEAH: and a piece of cheese, a McMuffin, it was an egg McMuffin.

Yeah, 

Tina: and they did add a little palm oil to it just so they could, you know, make sure there was a consistent level of fat, so it was a very high fat meal. Nonetheless, when people took in these high anthocyanin supplements, real food, though, they didn't do it as a pill. They had a lessening of the detrimental effects of that, raise in cholesterol right after a high fat meal.

So, you know, this is one of those things I do say a lot, which is. Add berries to meat when you're eating meat, think, how am I going to get some color on my plate next to this? It could be dried fruit in your salad. It could be a chutney or a compote that you make specifically, but try to get, especially the anthocyanins, which again, is that red to blue spectrum.

So that includes purple and what we technically call blackberries are actually more in the blue spectrum. Um, so it mitigates. Some of the detrimental effects, and this could be even when you're barbecuing, you know, you're, you're at the barbecue in the summertime and you're going to make coleslaw, maybe reach for the red cabbage instead of the green cabbage, because that purple will have some of benefits to offset some of the detriment of the food that you're 

LEAH: grilling.

Even though cabbage is not a berry, whether botanical or culinary, um, I like to start meals with a salad. It's just kind of how I grew up.

And so sometimes the salad isn't very glamorous. And so I'll do arugula. And when they're in season, I'll do pomegranate seeds But that's really a nice side. And you can put pomegranate seeds on, I know it's kind of, maybe it's bougie, but I put them on tacos.

Oh, just adds a little crunch and a little sweetness. You know, if you have 

Tina: like a 

LEAH: homemade beef taco or whatever, just throw some pomegranate seeds on there. I don't know. I get, I get crazy. Mm 

Tina: hmm. Yeah. And still on that. Okay. So that is the anthocyanin. And I'm thinking like in the winter time, maybe like we said, berries are mostly in your freezer.

So other things with anthocyanins are anything that have that color spectrum. So it could be black beans, it could be black rice, it could be purple 

LEAH: carrots. So we're talking 

berries here. 

Tina: I know. I know. Okay. Back to berries. 

LEAH: well, you just mentioned, like, you know, wintertime and berries aren't really available. The, besides pomegranates, the berry that I think of in the winter It's an elderberry. So there are berries that are very specific. I think they're all overall good for your immune system, but the ones that people think of specifically for immune health is the elderberry I think the main one.

And so that's really nice. There's some limited evidence showing it's beneficial for viruses, colds, that kind of thing. 

Tina: Yeah. It makes a lovely tea. It's a little astringent. It is a 

LEAH: little astringent, but, um, yeah, you can make syrup extracts with elderberries. One berry that I don't really know that much about, um, it's used a lot in Chinese medicine is the goji berry.

 so goji berries, which are also known as wolf berries depending on the product that you find they can interact with things like warfarin, which is a blood thinner. And there may be other drugs, um, for blood pressure or diabetes that it can interact with because of the effect on one's blood pressure or on their blood sugar levels.

And so check with your pharmacist if it's something that You know, we want to add, I know that you can add them to tea. I've had teas with them with goji berries in them, but, um, yeah, I, and again, when we're talking about berries, for the most part, we're talking about foods, 

Tina: yes, things we literally pluck off the bush or.

Have in the 

LEAH: kitchen. Yeah, you know, or like a dried fruit or something, but um, there are goji berry supplements and I would just kind of stay away from those. 

Tina: Well, I guess the other kind of exotic berry that everyone may be aware of is the acai berry, right? 

LEAH: There are studies behind acai. Um, in relation to cancer.

Tina: Yeah, my issue with it out there in the world when it's offered is it's usually with a lot of sugar, you know, so acai bowls, for example. even though it's fructose, there's tend to be like laden with other things in it that is really high in 

sugar. 

LEAH: You're, you mean because they add the sugar because it's so tanniny?

Tina: I think so. Like, yeah. So there's granola. And then banana and, they'll just keep piling on more and more sugary things in there. Like, and usually some kind of sweetener even. 

LEAH: Yeah. I've seen, I know that you can get, uh, acai bowls, some places where they have added sugar and then there are others where it doesn't have the added sugar, but then you do have all of those other, well, you could buy the acai packets and make your own bowl at home.

You could buy like unsweetened acai, frozen packets and. Yeah, just kind of set up your own little bowl or just even throw it in a smoothie. 

Tina: I'll tell you, I have never really gone that way because I don't see it doing anything I can't get from my local berries. I'm not 

LEAH: convinced. I have bought them and then thrown them into smoothies It's just one of those things like in the winter when you're just not really getting berries It's just kind of a thing to throw into a smoothie.

Tina: Yeah, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with it. I just Why go exotic when I can go local is my, is my thought process. from a, like, just from a practical perspective. Like I don't need to dig too deep. South America, right? They're from South America.

LEAH: Yeah, it's from the Amazon Rainforest. They're from Brazil. And depending on your growing zone, apparently you can grow your own.

but I'm assuming you live somewhere warm and tropical or have a greenhouse.

Okay. So other, berries that might be more known in the cancer world, black raspberries. you know Anytime they study food, they're looking at extracts. They're not necessarily looking at the whole food And so when there are observational studies showing Oh people who eat more berries have better health Like they're looking at fruit and berries are kind of included in that.

It's really hard to do an observational study where you're like, Oh, these people specifically eat more berries. And so a lot of the studies are looking at these specific extracts that, know, we kind of touched on at the beginning. And so black raspberries, the extracts have been shown to be supportive.

In reducing the risk of head and neck cancers, esophageal cancer, that sort of thing. 

Tina: I wonder if it 

is because it is a little bit higher in a ellagic acid. Then some others out there. Yeah, 

LEAH: I believe so 

Tina: because the logic acid is and is one of those polyphenols that has been studied And all of these have we haven't really mentioned this but they all have antioxidant properties, right?

Right, they're all used in antioxidant formulas They're all antioxidants themselves. And so this is why I'm constantly saying follow the color because wherever there's color in nature, there's antioxidants because the purpose of these colors is often for the plant itself to ward off dangers, whether it's funguses.

Viruses, bacteria, so some of these compounds that are anthocyanins in the berries are also serving the plant's purpose. They're having an anti, uh, microbial effect for the plant. So you can see why eating organically or foraging where there's been no sprays is ideal because the plant is going to. Create these chemical compounds, these plant chemicals that protect themselves, these same compounds that protect the plant end up being a lot of the antioxidants we know are good for human health and are anti-cancer, et cetera.

A logic acid happens to be one of the many. but we can probably say that about a lot of the compounds in the berries. And so ideally, organic is about. uh, growing in soil and having its native, um, innate, I should say, having its innate defenses at optimal levels. It needs to be a strong plant whose berries will make lots of these.

Phytochemicals and that way we get more of them and it's healthier for us. So this is my, this is my other soap box. I'm not a huge fan of the hydroponics out there. People growing things in pure water. I think soil is necessary for a healthy plant. A healthy plant is necessary for us to get the goodies from it.

So if we want to eat nutritiously, we should eat plants that grew in soil. But that's my, that's a whole nother podcast. 

LEAH: We're so going far. Like, we're not sticking with the berries here. It's close. Are berries grown hydroponically? 

Tina: Um, I don't know. 

LEAH: Cranberries, right? In a bog. 

Tina: Yeah, not those. Those don't count. 

LEAH: Okay. so as I mentioned, vitamin C is really rich in A lot of berries, um, with strawberries being the highest, almost twice as much as what's in an orange.

Tina: Well that's interesting. I think kiwi might qualify, because it's got seeds and a skin and a pulp. I don't know. And they're very high in vitamin C as well. 

LEAH: Kiwi berry, kiwi fruit. 

 okay. So there is this berry that I don't think a lot of people have heard of. And it does, the name is kind of cheesy. It's called a miracle berry and botanically it's not a berry. It's what's known as a droop.

So there you go. New term for you. But it is. A fruit that you can find it either as a supplement or dried fruit typically online. Have you heard of this miracle fruit? 

Tina: No. 

LEAH: And so it's used for taste changes. 

Tina: What is it exactly though? 

LEAH: It is literally called miracle fruit. It's um, botanical name is sensipalum dulcificum or something like that.

but I haven't tried it. Apparently, if you have taste changes where everything kind of tastes off or sour, it can make things taste sweet. 

Tina: I feel like I'm reading something that's totally made up because, um, as soon as I Google that, it says it's known for a berry that, when eaten, causes sour foods subsequently to consume to taste sweet, which you just said.

This effect is due to miraculin. 

LEAH: Isn't that weird? I know. 

Tina: Well, they clearly named that. Substance off after the common name. but it's it's almost like we're reading a spoof of a 

berry 

LEAH: No, it it really yeah, I was I was I was kind of skeptical But apparently it can be helpful for people and yeah, because there's this one company, I think down in florida that Imports them or grows them and then makes this product.

Tina: Wow. So here's something interesting. So it's native to West Africa, but then I'm reading online, it says since 2011, the United States FDA has imposed a ban on importing this plant, the miracle plant, the miracle berry, miracle fruit from its, from its origin in Taiwan, declaring it as quote, illegal undeclared sweetener.

What? However, the ban does not apply when imported from other countries. Wow. Okay. Dried Miracle Berry. It's coming to us now. It'll be on the shelves. There it 

is. 

LEAH: Yeah. So I think there is a place in Florida, like I said, either grows it or they import it and they started 

this 

LEAH: company. 

Tina: Yeah. It's on the market as Dried Miracle Berry in the EU right now.

Fascinating. Yeah. See, 

LEAH: the more, you know, It is marketed towards people who have taste changes and especially taste changes related to cancer treatment. So I just wanted to mention that. 

Tina: A berry that I've never even heard 

of.

LEAH: And then another berry, which I don't really think of, and I think you could use more parts of the plant than just the berry, but sea buckthorn. So the first time I had sea buckthorn, it was in a tart at that restaurant, true food kitchen. 

Tina: Oh yeah. 

LEAH: They're Several of them, like in Arizona and California, they had a seasonal tart, sea buckthorn.

I guess it has a lot of pectin in it. And it's a berry that has carotenoids, which is the orange yellow color that, you know, is found in, fruits and vegetables. So the health benefits of sea buckthorn is it's very rich in fatty acids. And those fatty acids are supportive to mucous membranes. So it can be beneficial for people who have dry eyes, vaginal dryness, dry skin just in general. And it also is really rich in vitamin C. 

Tina: Yeah, so this is sea buckthorn, the berry, as opposed to, there are larger trees called buckthorn trees.

 it's not related to that. 

T

No.

LEAH: Okay, so, another is the ground cherry. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. It's funny because the plant itself looks like a tomato.

Like when it's growing, it looks like a little tomato plant and a tomato technically as a berry. Mm hmm. Huh. It's known as a golden berry or a ground cherry.

 those are the kind of yellowish color. So that's another one that has the carotenoids in it. 

Tina: So the picture of the ground cherry looks a lot like a tomatillo. 

LEAH: Yeah, right. It's got the little husk. Yeah. It's um, also known as an Inca berry Peruvian ground. Cherry poho berry, golden berry Husk Cherry and Cape Gooseberry. 

Tina: Yeah. So it's basically one of those foraged ones. 

LEAH: And I wonder if it's invasive in some areas, because I do remember getting compost from some dirt place around here. And all of these, what I thought initially were tomato plants started coming up. And then. I noticed it started to look like a tomatillo plant, and I'm like, there's no way a tomatillo is growing in this climate.

And so then I was like, did I 

get seeds mixed up? And I think it was ground cherry. I ended up pulling them all because I didn't know what it was, They are like all throughout my soil, so they must have like really persistent little seeds the way tomatoes do.

Anyways, so there are a few berries that you may not have been familiar with that have overall health 

benefits. 

Tina: Yeah. And I think, again, I'm, I'm such a fan of local sourcing. So in the spring and early summer, looking around at your own vicinity. And seeing what comes up. I mean, we have all sorts of things here in the Pacific Northwest.

We have salmon berries, we have thimble berries. 

LEAH: We have, well, we have blackberries, which are pretty much a weed. It is so funny to go other places and spend so much money on blackberries when. During blackberry season, please just come over to my house and just I mean they are it's so invasive they grow on the sides of roads and people will just like stop and pick them I mean, they're just they're 

Tina: everywhere.

Yes, and they're hard to tamp down. Um Yeah, so getting to know your local sources is probably a fun way to to get to learn and use more berries in your own diet 

LEAH: Um, just kind of quickly, some of the other benefits of, you know, overall benefits of berries is, that have some research behind them, Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. And so cognitive function or cognitive support, I should say, is another nice benefit of berries. 

Tina: Absolutely. Oh, and you know, we didn't even touch on this, but we're just at the beginning of learning how all of these phytochemicals from berries are affecting the microbiota of the gut.

And so there are favorable effects on the bacteria and other organisms in the gut. And it's. helpful for creating more diversity of various bacteria. So more to be learned there. But when we talk about cancer, immune system, Alzheimer's, whatever we're talking about, we can't discount how these foods affect what's going on in our GI tract 

And who's inhabiting our GI tracts as far as the bacteria, viruses, and funguses that do live there. That's another way that the berries are probably helpful for our overall 

LEAH: health. Right. And so if someone were going through. Treatment with immunotherapy, it'd be nice to add some berries into your diet.

I guess there, I have had patients, and I know we've have mentioned this in other episodes, who were told not to do berries if they were going through certain treatments, mostly with radiation. 

Tina: Yeah, I wouldn't do any concentrated sources. I wouldn't pull out the Vitamixer or my juicer and really go at it because what happens is you end up ingesting amounts that are beyond dietary, right? you can juice a lot of carrots, you can juice a lot of berries, you can put a lot through any machine and drink it, then you're ingesting an amount that actually could have an effect.

That meets the radiation and maybe thwarts the effect of all of that oxidation from radiation. But I think regular dietary amounts? No. I don't think regular dietary amounts are even going to come close to doing anything because radiation is so powerful and such a big dose of oxidation that you can't negate it with some blueberries or anything.

LEAH: Yeah, I would say don't do, like, people take bilberry supplements for their eyesight. Like, don't do a concentrated, like you were saying, like a supplement form. And I think you will probably have digestive upset from eating a lot of blueberries before you're gonna, you're gonna have some after effects the next day, um, if you eat too many blueberries because of the fiber.

 So that's just something I wanted to kind of bring up is that I have had A number of patients over the course of my career who have been told by previous oncologists to avoid berries during 

radiation.

Tina: All right. So if we, if we just summarize this into some take home points, obviously add berries to your diet.

And we're talking about culinary berries, 

LEAH: right? You can add botanical berries too. I mean, there's benefit, but yes, specifically the culinary berries. 

Tina: Yes. What we call 

LEAH: berries. Things with berry at the end of the 

Tina: name. Exactly. And they all have value and you don't have to be exotic. You can go exotic if you want to.

Nutrients are preserved with freezing. So don't think you have to eat fresh all the time no matter what the season. They do hit their peak of nutrient value in their given season. 

LEAH: So find your berry picking farm and pick them and wash them, lay them out on a baking sheet and freeze them and then put them in a 

Tina: bag.

Yeah. and making sure you get some kind of berries most days of the week I would say I'm a big proponent of eating from different parts of the plant anyways and berries is one of those parts, you know So you eat the fruiting aspect of the plant along with somewhere in your diet You're gonna eat leaves somewhere roots 

So make sure you have berries at least more days than not in a week. I would say daily, but I think sometimes that's too much to ask people. 

LEAH: I mean, you could do things like have a fresh berry jam one day. You know, there are other, there are, there are ways of incorporating berries. 

Tina: Um, sometimes when someone says do something every day, the pressure of that is not worth the stress of the concept.

So if you can have them every day, go for it. If you get it most days of the week, call it good. 

 I mean, in some ways, stress is worse than eating poorly.

I think. I think stress is harder on the body than eating poorly is. I want to say this about your jam idea. There was a very old experiment. I want to say it was done in Finland. But I may be wrong about that, but they took white bread and put a glucose syrup on the white bread. And then they gave that to some healthy people, watched what their blood sugar did.

And then they gave them the same bread, the same, I think it was 20 grams of a sugar syrup on the bread. And then they put on top of that, some mixed berries and the same people. Different day, of course, eating that piece of bread, what happened when they put the berries on top of that very high sugar piece of toast, the blood glucose didn't go up as high.

So the berries, even though they contain sugar, they also contain compounds that lessen the effect of sugar on your own blood glucose. So berries are sweet, but because of the colorful components in there and the other nutrients that are found inside the berry, your blood glucose does not spike like it would with table sugar, for example.

 25 grams of. sugars from blueberries, naturally occurring sugar from the blueberry compared to 25 grams from your sugar bowl on a table, do not have the same effect So I want to put that out there because I think it's important because they're sweet.

And so a lot of people are like, yeah, but I'm trying not to eat sweet 

stuff. 

LEAH: Well, that has the fiber that can help to slow down that, that sugar absorption and eating berries has been shown to reduce the risk of type two diabetes. 

Tina: so as always if you like what you're listening to Don't forget to hit the follow button wherever you're listening to us right now and, share this with anyone you think might 

LEAH: need to add berries to their life. 

Tina: There you go. 

LEAH: so on that note, I'm Dr. Leah Sherman

Tina: And I'm Dr. Tina Kazer. And this is the Cancer Pod. Until next time. 

Thanks for listening to the cancer pod. Remember to subscribe, review and rate us wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates, and as always, this is not medical advice. These are our opinions. Talk to your doctor before changing anything related to your treatment plan. The cancer pod is hosted by me, Dr.

Lea Sherman. And by Dr. Tina Caer music is by Kevin McLeod. See you next time.