05/12/06 More health benefits from Cherries

More health benefits from cherries. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Continuing research on sweet bing cherries is yielding some impressive results. A new report confirms that Bing cherries may help fight the inflammation of arthritis, heart disease and cancer. Natural chemicals in sweet cherries apparently work selectively, suppressing production of some of the body`s inflammation-linked compounds, but not others, the researchers learned. For example, they found no significant decrease in levels of more than three dozen other markers of inflammation. For the research, 18 healthy men and women volunteers, aged 45 to 61, ate a total of about 45 fresh Bing cherries throughout the day for 28 consecutive days. Northwest Cherries promotion director, David Severn. SEVERN: The key message is that there's a lot of healthy attributes to cherries and there's a lot of research being done within the cherry industry to quantify the potential healthy attributes that it has and this supports some previous studies that have been done. This research on sweet cherries echoes findings on tart cherries. Joe Lothamer is Director of Promotions for the Cherry Marketing Institute. LOTHAMER: Back in 1999 one of the leading researchers published a report on the anti-inflammatory properties of tart cherries. He described at the time that it was like an ibuprofen like substance. This study was conducted by Agricultural Research Services' Western Human Nutrition Research Center in Davis, Calif. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.