Color and Potential Health Benefits
By contrasting in color with their background, berries are more attractive to animals that eat them, and they therefore aid in the dispersal of the plants' seeds.
Berry colors are due to natural plant pigments, many of which are polyphenols, such as the flavonoids, anthocyanins, and tannins, localized mainly in berry skins and seeds. Berry pigments are usually antioxidants in vitro and thus have oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) that is high among plant foods. Together with good nutrient content, ORAC derived in the laboratory distinguishes several berries within a new category of functional foods called "superfruits". However, there is no physiological evidence established to date that berry polyphenols have actual antioxidant value within the human body, and it remains invalid to claim polyphenols have antioxidant health value on product labels in the United States and Europe.
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