by Sammy Stein

Created on: March 26, 2009

Blackberries are jam (sorry) packed with goodness and natural products which are good for the health.

Like many fruit with red or purple tinges they are not only packed with Vitamin C which helps our immune system, skin and hair but they also have high doses of anthrocyanins which help our bodies ward off infections, help our bones and the absorption of other essential minerals.

A side issue but one which promoted health none the les is that in order to gather the fruit you have to go out and get into the fresh air, armed with a stout stick and gloves and work pretty hard to harvest them from the wild. Or at least that was true in the past. Like so many things which were once hard work, growing and gathering blackberries has been made easier with modern techniques and there are now garden varieties which have a large crop of big juicy fruit and what is more some of them have few or even no thorns.

Blackberries are, weight for weight, one of the richest sources of sugar and the sugars are natural fruit sugars like fructose and sucrose which means they are unprocessed and easier for our bodies to use and store as carbohydrates. They can easily be turned into the building blocks of proteins and other essential chemicals needed to repair and make new cells.

Selenium can be found in blackberries, with higher doses depending where the fruit are grown and this helps our joints, immune system and gives other health promoting propeties.

Blackberries are in season for a relatively long period compared to other wild fruit - from August to late October in good years- and athough it takes longer, the fruit are smaller and you run the risk of some of the fruit being spoiled by maggots or flies, there is nothing as good as fresh wild blackberries picked and eaten with cream and sugar, or straight from the bush.

Because each individual 'blackberry' is comprised of many minute fruit (aggregate fruit to give them their proper name) each fruit within the single 'berry' bearing a seed and each having a coat of thickened material, the blackberry provides a good sources of dietary fibre and eating vast quantities may have the expected unwanted result so they should not be over indulged in.

Always leave some fruit for birds and other small animals if you pick them from the wild because the blackberry is a vital late bounty for many of the wild small mammals and can be essential to help them put weight on to help them get through winter.

Blackberries have been crossed with logan and tay berries to produce garden crops with massive fruit and huge amounts of vitamin C. Wild blackberries are free but if you buy a small punnet in a shop it will set you back around 3 USD so it may just be worth getting out there and sampling the delicious, free, health giving fruit.

If you do not like the fresh fruit they can be cooked and used in pies, made into jam and jellies or added to cake toppings for delicious blackberry and apple crumbles.

Blackberries are wonderful fruit and they are there,waiting to be tried and eaten.

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