By Jacob Schor, N.D.
Honeybees are working over my raspberry patch this week. Patiently awaiting my berries to ripen, I've started watching the grocery store flyers waiting for when raspberries are loss leaders and cheap enough to buy in earnest. I love picking fresh raspberries off our bushes early in the morning, but I get almost as much happiness carrying flats of berries home from the store. This is Park Hill, and I¹ll never grow enough berries to last me the winter. Luckily raspberries freeze well: I put the entire flat, boxes and all, straight into the freezer. Once frozen ice hard, it¹s easy to dump the berries into freezer bags. Some years I've frozen enough berries to last the winter.
The recent research will inspire me to freeze even more berries than usual this summer. Raspberries are by far the best source of a chemical called ellagic acid. (Actually raspberries contain elligatanins which breakdown to ellagic acid but let¹s not get fussy here.) It¹s this acid that scientists are so interested in. It apparently prevents cancer and they want to know why. In a recent study, rats fed ellagic acid developed cancer a third less often than the control group (actually 20% incidence compared to 72%).
Ellagic acid does more to cancer than simply preventing it. It effects cancer cells directly. Even at low concentrations, ellagic acid inhibits cancer cell growth and stimulates "cell suicide."
Though most of the research has focused on the ellagic acid component of the raspberries, there may be something more involved. When freeze dried raspberries are used in the research, they worked better than pure ellagic acid. The inhibitory effect on cell growth of the berries could not be attributed solely to the content of the chemo preventive agent, ellagic acid, in the berries. The concentrations of ellagic acid required to halt cancer growth and can be achieved by eating about a cup of raspberries a day.
Usually when we talk about nutraceuticals, we are talking about food extracts or concentrates. We usually can¹t eat enough of the food to easily get a therapeutic effect. But in this case we can. As this raspberry research hits the market place, there will no doubt be raspberry concentrates and extracts for sale. There are already multilevel "One-a-day Raspberry capsules" selling on the internet. These products may someday have their use, for now, I'm happy with the idea of eating all the raspberries I can. Note: cancer patients or people at high risk for cancer, there is nothing wrong with actually consuming a cup of day of raspberries as part of their treatment plan.
A new website about red raspberries is being developed at red-raspberry.com. And in the meantime try these raspberry recipes.
Raspberry Pie
Crust:
3 cups flour
2 sticks butter
1/2 tsp salt
enough ice water to form a dough. If unsure how to proceed, follow
instructions from a cookbook
Filling:
4-6 cups raspberries
1/2 to 1 cup honey, sugar, or fructose
1/4 cup instant tapioca
squeeze of lemon juice
mix together and taste. Add more sweetener if needed. Better to use as little sugar as possible and have a slightly tart pie. Of course it's probably healthier, but a tart pie goes better with ice cream.
Bake at about 400 degrees till crust is golden and berries are bubbling.
This makes a Big Pie or two little pies.
Raspberry Smoothie:
1 cup raspberries
1 cup yogurt
Tablespoon of honey
Blend. It's easier than pie.
Raspberry popsicles:
follow smoothie recipe and freeze in popsicle molds
Jacob Schor, N.D. majored in Food Science and Product Development as an undergraduate at Cornell University, and received his doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine at National College in Portland, Oregon in 1991. He served as President of the Colorado Association of Naturopathic Physicians from 1992-1999 and maintains a private practice at the Denver Naturopathic Clinic.