The Twelve Ingredients of a Christmas Dinner - Cranberries

The Twelve Ingredients of a Christmas Dinner - Cranberries

The fruit of an evergreen dwarf shrub are harvested in wet fields so that they float and can be corralled as tiny spheres of crimson containing Vitamin C, fibre and manganese. The cranberry plant is found in the cooler regions within acidic bogs, be it natural or artificially managed.

There are four species of Vaccinum that are harvested for their super fruit qualities that include the nutritional and antioxidant qualities; these include erythrocarpum, macrocarpon, microcarpum and oxycoccus.

Tribes of the Northern Continents were the first to use cranberries as both medicine and as a food stuff; the Native Americans used them in dyes, pemmican and wound medicine. The cranberry is now a commercially viable crop in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin as well as several provinces in Canada and Argentina, Chile, Eastern Europe and the Netherlands. The vines are are watered frequently, often with a light nitrogen fertiliser application, but the initial establishing cost if a cranberry bed can reach approximate costs of US $ 70,000 per hectare (US$ 28,300 per acre). (Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranberry#Cultivation_2)

95% of the cranberries are used for juice, sauce and sweetened dried cranberries.

It was thought that cranberry juice had specific medicinal properties for urinary tract infections - there is some evidence that cranberries can help to prevent urinary tract infections but it has not been shown to be effective as a treatment for an existing urinary tract infection. (Source http://nccam.nih.gov/health/cranberry). If you have the latter, go and see a specialist. Also drinking too much juice lead to diarrhoea and can lead to secondary problems if people combine cranberry products with blood thinning drugs, liver medication or aspirin. (Source http://nccam.nih.gov/health/cranberry)

I hope Christmas Eve is going well for you all