Strawberries for Weight Loss

There's a farm up the road from me that grows and sells the most incredible, intense tasting strawberries every June.   The strawberries in the supermarket are good, and have a vaguely strawberry taste to them, but the strawberries I get from this farm are on the small side and the concentrated strawberry flavor explodes into your mouth when you bite into them. 

Every year I wait impatiently for this farm to start selling their strawberries and mourn when the season is over.  

During the brief interlude of their growing season, I make it a point to get up to the farm once, if not twice a week (the strawberries don't keep well, only lasting a couple of days in the refrigerator).   I eat the strawberries raw (in large quantities), make strawberry short-cake and tarts.  I also bottle a home made strawberry vinegar, toss them into salads, and even eat them with sliced with a sprinkling of really fine balsamic vinegar (a really amazing delicious combination it turns out).  

Thanks to the wonders of modern transportation and refrigeration, I eat strawberries year round, and that, it seems, is a good thing.   Strawberries, it turns out, can also help you to lose weight.   Here's how:

"The ellagic acid and anthocyanins found in strawberries aid weight loss in at least three ways:


1.Chronic inflammation blocks the hormones involved in keeping you lean. Anti-inflammatory foods like strawberries help restore normal function to weight-reducing hormones.

2.Anthocyanins actually increase the body's production of a hormone called adiponectin, which stimulates your metabolism and suppresses your appetite.

3.Both ellagic acid and anthocyanins slow the rate of digestion of starchy foods, controlling the rise in blood sugar that follows a starchy meal. This effect is used to control blood sugar in people with adult-onset (Type 2) diabetes."

Gee, and I thought that they just tasted good and were low in calories for their bulk--raw strawberries only have 49 calories per cup.