The tart cherry is available in a number of different products including the fresh fruit, the liquid concentrate, frozen, dried, pureed, cherry capsules the powder. With all of the different types of products available from this ruby red fruit what are and tart cherry extract benefits? Before I answer that question, the bigger questions are:
What is your lifestyle?
Why are you taking cherries?
What are you currently doing now?
The answers to thoses questions will help to guide you to what is the most beneficial way to get this fruit into your diet.
While it is true that as you process down the fresh fruit into the many different types of products mentioned above you do loss some of the "stuff" Mother Nature has in the recently harvested fruit, but you also pick up a number of additional benefits that simply isn't available in the fresh variety. Namely the convenience of enjoying the health benefits on a year round continious basis. For example of the nutritional information for the different tart cherry products:
Nutritional Information on Select Tart Cherry Products:
Daily serving (1/4 cup – 45g) of dried tart cherries provides the following:
• 138 Calories
• 4.55 g protein
• 28.9g Carbohydrates
• .23g Fat
Daily serving (1 oz. – 28.3g) of tart cherry juice concentrate
• 74 Calories
• .92 g protein
• 17.5g Carbohydrates
• 0g Fat
Daily serving (1/2 cup – 67g) of frozen tart cherries
• 28 Calories
• .65 g protein
• 6.35g Carbohydrates
• .4g Fat
Daily serving (1/2 oz. – 121g) of canned tart cherries
• 37 Calories
• .90 g protein
• 8.13g Carbohydrates
• .07g Fat
* Nutritional analysis conducted by the American Analytical Chemistry Laboratories Corporation
As you can see from the information above, the numbers vary from the type to type. So the bigger question you would want to ask yourself is how would you use the product? If you looking for a product to use only a few weeks during the summer, get the fresh cherries, however, if you want to enjoy the year round benefits the liquid or the capsules would be the first choice. Also, if your lifestyle has your traveling a lot the cherry capsules would be more convenient over the concentrate since they don't need to be refrigerated. However, if you enjoy the tast of the cherry itself, as I do, you'll want to stay with the concentrate itself. As you can see, while the fruit itself is ideal, you'll also want to consider how it will fit into your overall lifestyle. We look forward to you comments.
