When you think about foods that are good for your heart, tart cherries may not be the first thing that springs to mind. Researchers at the Cardiovascular Centre at University of Michigan have found that compounds in tart cherries may protect against the kind of inflammation that’s associated with both diabetes and heart disease.
Here’s what the researchers did. They acquired rats that were susceptible to heart disease, the medical test equivalent to humans. The scientists split the rats into two groups. Both groups were fed the same amount of calories in a high fat diet, but one group received a tart cherry extract as part of its diet. Here are the results:
1) Rats fed the cherries didn’t gain as much weigh or build up as much body fat as the other group.
2) They also had significantly lower cholesterol and triglycerides than the other rats.
3) Rats fed the tart cherry extract had significantly fewer of the molecules that signal heart inflammation
It’s too early to say conclusively that tart cherries are good for your heart, but it is encouraging. Researchers are now conducting human trials.
