Strawberries shown to reduce cholesterol

Eating strawberries can lower your cholesterol, researchers have found, but you may need to eat quite a lot - in the order of half a kilo each day - to have the desired effect.

Spanish and Italian scientists conducted a study in which 23 healthy volunteers ate 500 g of strawberries a day for a month and found that both LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol and triglycerides were reduced.

Blood samples were taken before and after the month. On average, the volunteers’ total cholesterol, LDL and triglycerides fell by 8.78%, 13.72% and 20.8% respectively. Their HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol levels remained unchanged.

The unusual diet also improved other blood parameters such as the general plasma lipid profile, antioxidant biomarkers (such as vitamin C or oxygen radical absorbance capacity), antihemolytic defences and platelet function.

All parameters returned to their initial values 15 days after the participants returned to their normal diets.

“This is the first time a study has been published that supports the protective role of the bioactive compounds in strawberries in tackling recognised markers and risk factors for cardiovascular diseases,” said Maurizio Battino, a researcher from the Università Politecnica delle Marche in Italy and director of the study.

While Battino admits there is still no direct evidence about which compounds of this fruit produce positive effects, he says, “all the signs and epidemiological studies point towards anthocyanins, the vegetable pigments that afford them their red colour”.

Other studies have shown that eating strawberries also protects against ultraviolet radiation, reduces the damage that alcohol can cause to gastric mucosa, strengthens erythrocytes (red blood cells) and improves the antioxidant capacity of the blood.

The results of the study are published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry.

Later this year, the researchers will publish another study in the journal Food Chemistry demonstrating that strawberry consumption increases the antioxidant function of blood flow, erythrocytes and mononuclear cells.