The Healthiest Food: Blueberries

I've spent a fair amount of time researching healthy foods, and I've become convinced that blueberries are just about the healthiest food in the world. In this blog, I will be sharing some of the benefits of blueberries that I've discovered in my research. 
     For starters, blueberries are one of the best antioxidants, which means that they can help prevent cancer. Antioxidants remove free radicals from our cells before they can develop into cancer.  Not only that, but there have been studies that show blueberries have properties that can inhibit the spread of existing cancer cells. 
     Blueberries are also known to have anti-aging properties. There have been animal studies in which blueberries have actually reversed brain aging. There is also evidence that blueberries can lower the risk for developing Alzheimer's disease. Furthermore, blueberries are believed to improve learning skills and memory. It's no wonder that blueberries are called the "brain berry". Perhaps test scores would go up if school lunches included blueberries with every meal. 
     One of my favorite things about blueberries is their ability to reduce belly fat. Studies have shown that adding blueberries to the food of laboratory rats resulted in a decrease in the rats' abdominal fat. Even when the rats were on otherwise unhealthy high-fat diets, they still showed positive results when given blueberries. Just think how much better our results would be if we ate blueberries in addition to a healthy diet!
     I've already mentioned some of the things I like about blueberries, however there are many other benefits to this amazing fruit. Blueberries are also shown to lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, relieve arthritis, improve the immune system, reduce wrinkles, prevent urinary tract infections, improve eyesight, prevent eyesight degeneration, improve coordination, prevent diabetes, increase metabolism, and they are high in fiber. 
          With all the health benefits of blueberries, you'd think they would have to taste terrible. But they don't! They're really good. The benefits of blueberries are so numerous that I almost feel like a snake-oil salesman when I list them all. Except everything I've written here has been researched extensively. Look it up if you don't believe me. In my opinion, blueberries are evidence of intelligent design. There's just no way that something so delicious and remarkably useful to our bodies could have evolved by accident. 

Vitamin D deficiency

I've recently become aware of the importance of Vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency can lead to all sorts of problems. Among other things, insufficient Vitamin D can lead to fragile bones and it can increase the risk for cancer.

One of the primary ways we get Vitamin D is from sunlight. The body creates Vitamin D when exposed to the sun. Living in Ohio, I don't see much sun during the Winter. That's why I started looking into foods that contain Vitamin D. Here are some of the foods that are high in Vitamin D:

Vitamin D Foods:

• Salmon
• Eggs
• Milk
• Mackerel
• Catfish
• Soymilk
• Fish Oil
• Herring
• Trout
• Shrimp

There are others, but these are among the highest. As you can see, most of them are seafood. So a good rule of thumb is to make sure you are getting seafood in your diet. Also, if you are a vegetarian, you may want to consider taking a Vitamin D supplement because there are very few plants that contain this vitamin.