Who doesn’t love strawberries? And you don’t need any reason other than the pleasure of their sweetness to eat them every day. But according to researchers from Oklahoma State University, there’s lots more to strawberries than the flavor.
Their study was published in the journal Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition with funding from the NIH and the California Strawberry Commission. In it the researchers review over 130 studies attesting to the strawberry’s status as a “functional food.”
There is no regulated meaning for the term “functional food.” But it usually refers to a food that provides some benefit in addition to calories that may reduce disease risk or promote general health. That can be said of every fresh, organic whole food. But functional food is also a term that has become a marketing tool for food manufacturers who “enrich” their processed foods with vitamins, minerals, herbs and other supplements.
