King of superfruits?

Wolfberries ("goji", Lycium barbarum L.), one of the

world's most nutrient-rich plant foods,

are being used in a variety of new consumer products.

Its high content of prebiotic dietary fiber is an important nutrient feature.

[follow the Wikipedia links]

What's New in this Edition of the Berry Doctor's Journal?

• Fact: berry polyphenols are not proven as nutrients so no Dietary Reference Intakes exist for them
• Hypothesis: berry polyphenols, thought to be antioxidants, are much less important than known berry micronutrients such as vitamin C and essential minerals
• Hypothesis: the most important nutritional value of berries is their uniformly high level of prebiotic dietary fiber

Hypothesis testing

From an early stage of training, scientists are taught to formulate and test hypotheses.

The "formulating" part occurs by pulling together all previous scientific knowledge about a topic to develop an experiment that can be tested and observed repeatedly in the laboratory, possibly leading to creation of a scientific fact.

Taught to expect negative results, the young scientist is trained to pose the hypothesis in words as a negative outcome:

"my experiment will test if x increases,

but the expected result is that it will not"

Called a null hypothesis, this is the start-line of a series of experiments which, if able to reject the null hypothesis, usually creates excitement and stimulates another series of experiments with a new null hypothesis.

The straightforward answer is "No".

Polyphenols -- anthocyanins, flavonoids, flavones, flavanones, stilbenes, tannins, oligomeric proanthocyanidins -- have not yet been shown to have physiological effects in the human body.

Interest in them has been created by test tube research, but insufficient science exists to convince scientific experts and regulatory bodies that they are bioavailable or have importance to human health.

Consequently, there are no Dietary Reference Intake values for polyphenols and no health claims are allowed by product manufacturers wishing to market the health benefits of their products.

If you see a health benefit about dietary antioxidants claimed on a product label or in marketing literature as a value for buying the product, the manufacturer is in violation of the law for selling the product with this claim.

Rubus berries -- blackberries (Rubus ursinus L.) and raspberries (Rubus idaeus L.) --

contain high levels of macronutrients and micronutrients.

Levels of dietary fiber, vitamin C, essential minerals and

omega fats (in their chewable seeds) are high.

Prebiotic Dietary Fiber: a Key Supernutrient

When we think of key nutrients in superfruits, most marketers lead people to believe the polyphenol antioxidants are the most important component, and we all tend to think this way when buying fresh fruits and vegetables.

When we shop for fruits and vegetables, wouldn't we normally think that this relationship below is most important?

Color = antioxidant value = freshness = most health value

But maybe color and freshness apply to something else.

Among nutrients in plants foods, the one with high health value consumers most overlook is dietary fiber -- the subject of four FDA-approved health claims.

Browse them here by reading the summary for sections .76, .77, .78 and .81, click!

Dried wolfberries ("goji", Lycium barbarum L.), an excellent

source of prebiotic dietary fiber as polysaccharides

Breaking down the fiber message

Consider a black grape or blueberry where popping it into your mouth produces two sensations about layers -- there's the skin and the juicy pulp.

Fruit skins are made to be a covering of denser material made up of fibrous structural elements that protect the inside berry components. This is where insoluble fiber elements like cellulose and lignans make for a somewhat tough , but still edible, covering.

In our digestive systems, insoluble fibers act as laxatives by attracting water. They do not participate in fermentation.

Soluble prebiotic fibers are found in the pulp.

They consist of thousands of different sized polysaccharides and pectins which dissolve readily in water and are excellent sources for fermentation eventually yielding short-chain fatty acids like butyric and acetic acids.

The soluble fibers are prebiotic food for our intestinal bacteria, also called microflora which are aided by probiotic cultures in foods like yogurt and some fermented dairy products.

The short-chain fatty acids have extensive health-related roles in human physiology (click to see a list), and are among the most widely used products of digesting food by the human body.

These are the real health values of berry fibers.

Also see

A different view of dietary fiber

International governments are still trying to create a simple definition of dietary fiber, news release, October 8, 2008