If you want an addition to your diet that's both delicious and nutritious, check out the health benefits of raspberries. Raspberries like many other colorful fruits and vegetables and packed with antioxidants and powerful phytonutrients to help boost your body's immune system and bring good health. Raspberries also help you in a number of other ways.

The antioxidants in raspberries contain one antioxidant found abundantly in raspberries. This is the family of phytonutrients called ellagitannins. Ellagitannins stop the carcinogens from binding to the DNA and makes the connective tissue stronger so any existing cancer doesn't spread. It also may inhibit cancer growth by causing the cancer cells to die.

Normally cancer cells don't die but divide. Instead of one cancer cell, you have two. The Ellagic Acid that comes from ellagitannins causes only cancer cells to go through the normal dying process. If you undergo chemo or radiation, it causes all cells to die in that area. Ellagic acid only affects the cancer cells.

In recent studies on rats, when scientists added freeze-dried black raspberries and strawberries to be 5 to 10 percent of their diet, there was a dramatic reduction in precancerous cells and tumor growth. It stopped 80 percent of the colon cancer growth according to a study completed by the Ohio Department of Agriculture.

Another study done at the Hollings Cancer Institute located at the University of South Carolina took nine years to complete but the effort was well worth the time. They used a double blind study on 500 patients with cervical cancer. Some received Ellagic acid derived from ellagitannins. The substance inhibited and stopped cancer cell division. It also caused normal cell death all within a 72-hour period. This worked for breast, esophageal, skin, colon, pancreas and prostate cancer cells.

If fighting cancer wasn't enough, there are plenty more benefits from eating a bowlful of raspberries every day. One cup of raspberries can supply 62 percent of your daily value required. It also supplies over 52 percent of your daily requirement for vitamin C, 8 percent of the amount of folate, 7 percent of the necessary vitamin B2, 5.5 percent of magnesium and niacin, 5.3 percent of daily potassium and 5 percent of your daily requirement for copper. If that wasn't enough, one cup also contains over one third of the necessary daily fiber and about 5 percent of omega 3 fatty acids.

More studies show that eating your raspberries can save your vision. According to data in may studies, if you eat 3 or more fruits daily you lower your risk to develop ARMD, age related macular degeneration by as much as 36 percent.

One study followed 110,000 men and women and evaluated their intake of fruits and vegetables and supplements of vitamin A, C, E and carotenoids. They found that the vitamins and vegetable intake didn't affect the development of ARMD but the consumption of fruit most certainly did. Of course, raspberries fit into this category and you can joyfully eat a bowl of this sumptuous fruit telling others, you're saving your eyesight.

Besides all the other benefits, raspberries are low in calories so they fit into any diet plan. They're a great way to add vitamins to your diet and make any salad more interesting. There are so may health benefits of raspberries that the fact they taste delicious almost fades in the background.

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