 Are berries healthy? Might seem like a simple question, but every single food on this planet has a unique nutrient as well as anti-nutrient profile. We can look at the vitamin, mineral, element, and fatty acid content of a food to determine if it gives our body anything it needs to perform metabolic processes, to build up our bodies, to be in good health. Then we can see if there's anything negative about the food, whether it's a specific compound like oxalates, causing inflammation, or just a high carbohydrate content being an issue. We know every single indigenous group consumed quality foods, both animal and plant foods. If we look at the foods they consumed, they were of wild quality. Imagine picking some ripe berries off of a tree in your backyard once per year. The level of quality of those past plant foods is generally unrealistic to replicate due to genetic modification. The berries most people are eating have an unrealistic amount of calories, and due to a lack of soil quality, the nutrient content isn't where it's supposed to be. In general, the nutrient profile of most berries is fairly similar, but there are definite variances that you should look up if you're consuming large amounts of a specific berry. You know, blueberries might have higher tannins than a raspberry does. They do have a small insignificant amount of B vitamins. The highest vitamin in berries is vitamin C, followed by vitamin E. There are small amounts of the plant form vitamin K1, which might convert to K2 depending on your gut microflora. The electrolyte minerals are pretty low, not too much sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium. Most berries do have copper and manganese, which varies depending on the soil type and berry. There are certainly antioxidant benefits of consuming vitamin C and vitamin E. Granted, the source is pure and not hampering the body in some other way. If you're consuming berries that were sprayed with glyphosate, the antioxidant benefit of the vitamin C and vitamin E is likely outweighed by that negative agrochemical. We can say that having adequate plant foods in the body is helpful for balancing your zinc to copper ratios. From a caloric survival perspective, very difficult to say that berries would have been consumed frequently or sought after and even if you came across a berry bush, it's not really significant to human survival. They may be something you would have enjoyed several times per year as a treat with your high quality animal foods with your more calorically dense plant foods. One anti-nutrient concern in berries is oxalates. Raspberries being significantly higher than the others, oxalates can be a major concern for some people causing inflammation, oxidative stress in various parts of the body and pretty much all tissues in some way. But the amount of oxalates from a few servings of berries isn't going to cause issues and most people don't have problems with oxalates unless they have a genetic disease. One consideration is if you're consuming coffee and chocolate. Coffee has phytic acid which binds to minerals and takes them out of the body. In this case, we are worried about calcium being taken out because calcium would normally bind to oxalates and help inhibit their absorption. So if you're dousing the calcium out of your stomach every day with a pot of coffee, even with the small amount of oxalates in the diet, you may be absorbing more than you should. Solicylates are another anti-nutrient that typically cause respiratory issues and guys the symptoms and autoimmune reactions to each of these anti-nutrients is so broad I would just Google them and maybe try to pinpoint some things. Very difficult to self-diagnose. All you can really do is remove the food and see if it fixes the issue. Solicylates greatly depend on the person's ability to break them down. Most salicylate issues are from medications like aspirin which contain three to four times more salicylate than what would be found in your diet on a daily basis. As with oxalates, someone with a compromised kidney and liver function might have to avoid them. I might do a more in-depth video on oxalate salicylates and kind of really explain every anti-nutrient individually or maybe I'll do an e-book, I don't know. But animal foods are generally low in both oxalates and salicylates but bacon for instance has preservatives added to it which are high in salicylates. We briefly mentioned phytic acid which is commonly referred to as phytates. The minerals that they bind to most commonly are phosphorus, zinc and magnesium. So if a plant food has a high phosphorus content it is in the form of phytate. They are present in berries but not in significant enough amounts. Phytates tend to be an issue with certain grains and legumes. Berries do contain tannins which may inhibit certain enzymes so if you eat a bunch of berries and you don't digest them, tannins are the likely culprit. There are also a bunch of antioxidants in berries which are usually referred to as beneficial but have been shown to be negative as well, various polyphenols. The point is there are so many substances in berries that are hypothetically bad or good for you but reality is an indigenous diet contained thousands of different plant foods which all had similar pros and cons. They all contain these anti-nutrients, maybe the soil quality was a little higher and the antioxidant capacity was higher because these wild plant foods had drastically more vitamin C and vitamin E but these indigenous people were in perfect health. It's safe to say that the only practical application for berries is the food you enjoy. Sprinkle some on your yogurt, have a handful as a snack. They aren't calorically dense so you can't really use it as a performance enhancement food unless you were to juice them. And in that case, drinking cups of berry juice every day is definitely an oxalic concern plus you probably won't digest the berry juice due to the high tannin content in something like blueberries and berries tend to be expensive especially per calorie if you can find berries worth eating but what berries are worth eating? Certainly organic to remove some concerns about agrochemicals, herbicides and pesticides. Freezing the berries does lower the nutrient content slightly. Frozen berries have less vitamin C, less vitamin E, overall lower food quality. The B vitamin content does lower but B vitamin content of berries isn't significant. It's like 1 or 2% of the RDA. Ideally you have fresh organic in season berries. They would be a great addition to your diet. Of course most people don't have that so if you really do enjoy berries frozen organic are a decent choice. You might have to try a few different brands to find one that tastes good while blueberries for instance aren't really that sweet or enjoyable to eat compared to the larger plump blueberries that people are used to. If it was up to me, I'd choose the highest quality version that tastes the best. It's definitely worth mentioning that there is like a soil based probiotic component to a very high quality local in season blueberry. If you're buying a bag of frozen berries, if you're buying anything produced on a conventional farm it's questionable if you should consume that berry without washing the outside or if there's even any beneficial soil based probiotic bacteria on the outside of that fruit or that vegetable. So thank you guys for joining me. If you could please like the video, subscribe, hit that bell icon, definitely share the video. I spend a lot of time researching these videos so if you could just spend a few seconds to share it on social media that would really help me out. If you guys do want to support me further, check out Frankie's free range meat, high quality nutrient-dense animal foods at an affordable price. Sample box is coming in about a week and a half guys. Really excited for that. Wagyu is going to be back as well. So you can also go to Frankie's Naturals for minimal ingredients, minimally processed hygiene and cosmetic products. You do want to reach out to me for health consultations. Send me an email frankatifano at gmail.com. Maybe you want to talk about berries for an hour. I don't know. Thanks again guys and enjoy the rest of your day.