The Health Benefits of Cherries and Two Cherry Recipes

Delicious and Nutritious

Besides being delicious, cherries offer many nutritional benefits. Cherries are abundant in anthocyanin, a phytochemical that is high in antioxidant capacity.

Cherries can be beneficial for high cholesterol as they are also high in the soluble fiber, pectin, which has cholesterol lowering properties.

Cherries are also a good source of potassium and vitamin C.

Categories

There are two categories of cherries: sweet and sour. Sweet cherries are either light or dark skinned.

• Bing (most popular, dark, extra sweet)
• Lambert (second most popular, extra sweet)
• Balaton (dark, sweet and sour)
• Morello (dark, tart)
• Rainier (yellow or pinkish, sweet)
• Royal Ann (light, sweet, maraschino)

Sour cherries are generally used for baking pies.

The Montmorency is the best known sour cherry. These cherries are bright scarlet and usually come canned or frozen. It is rare to find them fresh.

Cherries are sometimes overlooked in the fruit department but I can tell you from experience there’s nothing better than dark cherries in a smoothie.

This is my favorite recipe…

Dark (Sweet) Cherry Smoothie

Ingredients:

• 1 frozen banana
• 1 cup frozen dark cherries
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate (soy or almond) milk
• 1 tablespoon flaxseed meal

Preparation:

1. Pour milk in blender.
2. Add fruit.
3. Measure flaxseed meal and add.
4. Turn on high until creamy and drinkable.
5. Add additional milk if necessary.

A Cherry is a Drupe?

In addition to all these different kinds of cherries, cherries are also classified as a drupe.

You’ve never heard of a drupe?

Drupes are defined as a fleshy fruit that usually have a single hard stone that encloses a seed. Peaches and plums are drupes too.

Cherries can be a convenient, low-calorie snack food too.

They’re ready to go except for a little rinsing. A cup of sweet cherries contains 104 calories. Sour cherries only have 78 calories a cup. This dark cherry coconut shake is a bit more caloric, but definitely worth the extra calories.

Dark Cherry Coconut Shake

Ingredients:

• 1 cup frozen dark cherries
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate coconut bliss “ice cream”
• 1 – 1 1/2 cups original or vanilla (soy or almond) milk

Preparation:

1. Pour milk in blender.
2. Add cherries, then “ice cream.”
3. Blend on high until creamy and drinkable.
4. Pour into a chilled fountain glass.
5. Add straw.
6. Top with cherry!

I hope you enjoyed the article and both recipes. For more information you can send me an email, or leave a comment for me here on the page.

Happy and healthy eating!