Chandler Strawberries (photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of USDA)

If eating lots of strawberries sounds like fun then you’ll be glad to hear that the more you eat the more antioxidants your body will absorb. Antioxidants are the "natural zappers" of free radicals-unstable oxygen molecules associated with cancer, heart disease and the effects of aging. The good news comes to us from an article published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The article refers to a study conducted by the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center (BHNRC) in Beltsville, Maryland as part of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. Physiologist Janet Novotny, with the BHNRC's Food Components and Health Laboratory, led the study, which was published recently in the Journal of Nutrition.

It seems that plenty of people have decided to eat fresh berries to protect their health:

Marketed year-round, strawberries are the fifth most consumed fresh fruit in the United States, and consumption more than doubled in the past decade, according to experts. Strawberry's antioxidants come in the form of both long-established vitamins and newly defined plant chemicals. Berries are particularly well endowed with a series of compounds called anthocyanins--the source of the berries' blue, purple and red pigments.

If you’d like to read the USDA article cited above go to: More Strawberries, More Antioxidant Absorption