Eating Strawberries Cuts Cholesterol

Eating strawberries may help lower cholesterol, a new study suggests.

Italian and Spanish scientists said participants who ate half a kilo of strawberries a day for a month had significantly lower levels of bad cholesterol and triglycerides.

The latest study involved 23 healthy volunteers who were asked to eat 500 grams of strawberries everyday for a month. Researchers took participants'' blood samples before and after the study.

The findings revealed that the total amount of cholesterol, the levels of low-density lipoproteins (LDL or bad cholesterol) and the quantity of triglycerides fell to 8.78 percent, 13.72 percent and 20.8 percent respectively. However, levels of good cholesterol or high-density lipoprotein did not change.

Researchers added that participants also showed improvement in other parameters like general plasma lipid profile, antioxidant biomarkers (such as vitamin C or oxygen radical absorbance capacity), antihemolytic defenses and platelet function. However, all parameters returned to their initial values 15 days after participants stopped eating strawberries.

"This is the first time a study has been published that supports the protective role of the bioactive compounds in strawberries in tackling recognized markers and risk factors for cardiovascular diseases," lead researcher Maurizio Battino, researcher at Università Politecnica delle Marche in Italy said in a news release.

While there is no direct evidence that eating strawberries lowers cholesterol, researchers noted "all the signs and epidemiological studies point towards anthocyanins, the vegetable pigments that afford them their red color."

The study also found that eating strawberries protects against ultraviolet radiation, cuts the damage that alcohol can have on the gastric mucosa, boosts erythrocytes, or red blood cells, and enhances the antioxidant capacity of the blood.

The findings are published in the journal Food Chemistry.