The Blueberry Diet Review

The Blueberry Diet, as you might expect, involves eating lots of blueberries. Specifically, dieters eat 2-3 cups of blueberries every day.

This diet is designed to help anyone get their recommended daily dose of fruit along with all of the vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants found in blueberries.

Why would anyone do this? Well, the blueberry diet is rumored to be one of the most effective ways to blast away belly fat, improve cardiovascular health, and rejuvenate your overall health and wellness.

The Blueberry Diet sounds easy and effective. But is it really right for you? Find out in our blueberry diet review.

What is the Blueberry Diet?

The blueberry diet is a diet centered around eating blueberries. You eat a bowl of blueberries for breakfast. Then you eat a bowl of blueberries for lunch. Some dieters also eat a bowl of blueberries for dinner.

In total, you’re supposed to eat 2-3 cups of blueberries every day, with each bowl containing about one cup of blueberries.

Most nutritionists recommend eating at least 2 cups of fruit per day between the ages of 14 and 30. As the body gets older, that amount drops to 1.5 cups of fruit per day. The blueberry diet is based off the idea that most of us aren’t getting enough fruit, and that by providing dieters with clear, defined weight loss goals, people can lose weight and enjoy many other health benefits.

Aside from eating 2-3 cups of blueberries per day, there are no rules for the blueberry diet. However, dieters are expected to follow a healthy diet and should aim to get their recommended daily value of all other vitamins and nutrients while limiting consumption of junk food, alcohol, etc.

Benefits of the Blueberry Diet

Eating blueberries comes with a number of unique and powerful health benefits. They’re one of nature’s best antioxidants. Depending on where you live, they’re also a relatively affordable fruit to purchase, which makes this diet cheaper than most diets.

These and other benefits are making the blueberry diet more and more popular. Here are some of the powerful health benefits associated with the blueberry diet:

Lose Belly Fat

Blueberries contain an antioxidant called Anthocyanin. This antioxidant has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other illnesses.

In one study, rats which received a diet rich with blueberries were able to burn away fat despite being given a high fat diet, which suggests that blueberries have protective effects against the body’s absorption of fat.

Another benefit of blueberries is that they’re surprisingly low in calories. Each one cup serving of blueberries contains just 80 to 90 calories.

Reduce the Effects of Aging

Blueberries are rich with antioxidants. In fact, they’re one of the best fruits when it comes to delivering antioxidants to the body.

Eating a single cup of wild blueberries will provide between 13,000 to 14,000 antioxidants, which is 10 times the USDA’s recommended daily minimum intake. Farmed blueberries typically have between 9,000 and 10,000 antioxidants per cup.

Why are antioxidants so important? Antioxidants target free radicals throughout your body. Free radicals are dangerous atoms or groups of atoms which contain an odd number of electrons (they’re negatively charged). When they interact with other molecules within your body, they can cause chain reactions.

These free radical chain reactions are thought to create diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Free radicals have also been known to increase the effects of aging – both on the surface of your skin and in your brain, where free radicals inhibit neurotransmission.

By following the blueberry diet, you might be able to reduce your risk of disease and illness while also looking (and thinking) younger at the same time.

Reduce Cholesterol

Blueberries naturally block cholesterol. They do this by restricting the production of HMG-CoA reductase, which is an enzyme that your liver turns into cholesterol.

Some cholesterol lowering medication – like statin drugs – block this exact same enzyme. However, they do this while also increasing toxicity, damaging the liver, and creating other potentially harmful side effects.

Blueberries have similar effects to statin drugs but are non-toxic and create little burden for your liver. Obviously, you should talk to your doctor before replacing a prescribed cholesterol-reducing pill with blueberries.

Improve Your Body’s Natural Glucose Control

Blueberries are rich with polyphenols. Numerous scientific studies have found a link between polyphenols and a reduced risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Polyphenols do this by increasing your body’s ability to naturally control its glucose via insulin resistance. A diet rich with blueberries will help reduce high blood sugar and give the body the insulin resistance it needs to control its glucose.

Approximately 30 million Americans have diabetes. Another 50 million have metabolic syndrome (many are undiagnosed). With the blueberry diet, you can reverse the devastating effect that diabetes has on your blood glucose control.

Blueberries also have the additional benefit of a low glycemic index (GI). Blueberries typically have between 40 and 50 GI value. Anything below a 50 GI is considered low.

Affordable and Easy-to-Follow

Dieting would be easy if we could pay professional chefs to cook all our meals. Most of us can’t do that, which is why we spend hours in the kitchen preparing healthy and delicious meals.

Following the blueberry diet is not only easy: it’s affordable. Bulk blueberries can be purchased from any supermarket and even when they’re out-of-season, blueberries seem to be priced affordably at North American supermarkets.

Instead of spending hours in the kitchen or going to the supermarket to buy expensive ingredients you can hardly pronounce, the blueberry diet goes in the total opposite direction and is one of the most dieter-friendly diets on the market today.

Scientific Evidence for the Blueberry Diet

The blueberry diet hasn’t been mentioned in too many academic reports or journals. However, blueberries themselves have undergone a number of important studies over time. Here are some of the most important studies which have examined the health benefits of blueberries and, by extension, the blueberry diet:

2009 Study Shows Rats Lose Abdominal Fat When Following Blueberry Diet

In 2009, the University of Michigan released the results of a study where rats were given a high-fat or low-fat diet enriched with either whole blueberry powder or carbohydrates as 2% of their total diet. After 90 days, the rats fed blueberries had less abdominal fat. They also had lower cholesterol levels, better glucose control, and superior insulin sensitivity. The latter two factors are directly related to diabetes risk and play a critical role in how the body processes sugar for energy. Researchers concluded that the health benefits of blueberries were evident in rats, although more research was needed to confirm the results in humans.

2013 Study Indicates Surprising Health Benefits When Giving Blueberries to Healthy Humans

Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden examined the effects of exercise with or without blueberries on healthy humans. The study involved 15 healthy men and 17 healthy women. One group of participants took 150 grams of blueberries per day, while another did not. After 8 weeks, the blueberry group exhibited some surprising health benefits, including increased levels of fasting glucose and HDL cholesterol. In other words, the blueberry diet could reduce the risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome, among other blood glucose-related conditions.

2005 Study Shows Rats Reverse Cognitive Decline When Given Blueberries

One study published in Nutritional Neuroscience examined the effect that blueberry antioxidants had on the brains of rats. Rats were given various cognitive tests to assess cognitive performance. Rats which took a 2% blueberry diet for 8 to 10 weeks were measured having higher levels of antioxidants within various parts of the brain, including the cerebellum, cortex, hippocampus, and striatum. Rats which were given blueberries performed significantly better in cognitive testing than rats who were in the control group.

2014 Study Shows Blueberries Can Reduce the Risk of Parkinson’s

A 2014 study from NC State University examined the connection between blueberries and Parkinson’s, which is the 14th leading cause of death in the United States. The study found that two specific classes of phytochemicals within blueberries (anthocyanins and proanthocyanidins) reduced the risk of Parkinson’s. Other fruits also have these two phytochemicals, but blueberries are the most common fruit with the highest concentration of these valuable phytochemicals. Researchers also suggested that the phytochemicals were linked to a reduce risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, age-related disease, and diabetes.

How Blueberries Work

Blueberries are rich with a diverse range of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. All of these compounds create the blueberry benefits we know and love.

Blueberries contain vitamin C (16% Daily Value), for example, which is considered a natural antioxidant. They’re also rich with fiber: a 1 cup serving of blueberries can provide nearly 4 grams of fiber.

Blueberries also contain small amounts of potassium (4% Daily Value) and Vitamin B-6 (5% Daily Value).

When these ingredients are combined with the powerful phytochemicals and antioxidants listed above, they give us the powerful health benefits associated with blueberries.

vConclusion: Who Should Take the Blueberry Diet?

The most popular fruit in the United States is the strawberry. The second most popular fruit is the blueberry.

The blueberry diet lets you take full advantage of this affordable and delicious fruit. With powerful antioxidants, a low glycemic index, and easy-to-follow guidelines (just eat 2-3 cups of blueberries per day along with a standard, healthy diet!), the blueberry diet may be your next favorite diet for blasting away belly fat, clearing up skin, and reducing your risk of diabetes.