Long before being commercialized, cranberries were enjoyed by many native peoples thoughout the U.S. and Canada. One of the names was ‘ibimi,’ which means bitter/
sour berries. Another name used was sasemineash. European colonizers of North
America, later chose the name ‘craneberry’ because the plant flowers were shaped like the head and neck of sandhill cranes. Later on the word was shortened to ‘cranberry.”
Over 98% of all cranberry production comes mainly from the U.S. and to a lessor degree from Canada and Chile. An even smaller amount are produced in Belarus, Azerbaiijan, Latvia, and Romania. Cranberries take about 16 months to ripen. Only 5% of cranberries are sold fresh. The remaining 95% are sold for processing into juice, sauce, compote/jelly, or sweetened and dried cranberries.
Because mature cranberries are tart, they taste better when sweetened. The perfect natural sweetener is unrefined palm sugar, which has a low GI and is made from the flower sap of a palm tree. Most children love ‘Cranberry Sauce.‘ And, Thanksgiving
is the perfect time to make it.
• Lower levels of fasting blood sugar
• Lower levels of blood triglycerides
• Better antioxidant capacity in the blood
• Increased body levels of adiponectin (a fat cell hormone associated with lower level of blood sugar and blood triglycerides)
• Decreased insulin secretion
• Decreased insulin resistance
• Decreased accumulation of body fat
• Improvement with urinary tract infections (UTI) caused by E.coli bacteria
Numerous studies showed that consuming cranberries produced: