How Other Forms of Processing Affect This Food
Heat processing (canning: making jams, jellies, and preserves). As noted above, strawberries
turn brown when you heat them with sugar. Lemon juice added to jams, jellies, and preserves
makes the taste tart and helps preserve the color.
Medical Uses and/or Benefits
Lower risk of some birth defects. Up to two of every 1,000 babies born in the United States
each year may have cleft palate or a neural tube (spinal cord) defect due to their mothers’
not having gotten adequate amounts of folate during pregnancy. The current RDA for folate
is 180 mcg for a woman and 200 mcg for a man, but FDA now recommends 400 mcg for
a woman who is or may become pregnant. Taking a folate supplement before becoming
pregnant and continuing through the first two months of pregnancy reduces the risk of cleft
palate; taking folate through the entire pregnancy reduces the risk of neural tube defects.
Possible lower risk of heart attack. In the spring of 1998, an analysis of data from the records
for more than 80,000 women enrolled in the long-running Nurses’ Health Study at Harvard
School of Public Health/Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, demonstrated that a diet
providing more than 400 mcg folate and 3 mg vitamin B 6 daily, either from food or supple-
ments, might reduce a woman’s risk of heart attack by almost 50 percent. Although men
were not included in the study, the results were assumed to apply to them as well.
However, data from a meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association in December 2006 called this theory into question. Researchers at Tulane Univer-
sity examined the results of 12 controlled studies in which 16,958 patients with preexisting
cardiovascular disease were given either folic acid supplements or placebos (“look-alike” pills
with no folic acid) for at least six months. The scientists, who found no reduction in the risk
of further heart disease or overall death rates among those taking folic acid, concluded that
further studies will be required to ascertain whether taking folic acid supplements reduces
the risk of cardiovascular disease.
As an antiscorbutic. Strawberries, which (ounce for ounce) have more vitamin C than citrus
fruits, help protect against scurvy, the vitamin C–deficiency disease.
Adverse Effects Associated with This Food
Allergic reaction. According to the Merck Manual, strawberries and other berries are one
of 12 foods most likely to trigger classic food-allergy symptoms: upset stomach, hives,
angioedema (swelling of the face, lips, and eyes), and a hay-feverlike reaction. The others
are chocolate, corn, eggs, fish, legumes (peas, lima beans, peanuts, soybeans), milk, nuts,
peaches, pork, shellfish, and wheat (see wheat cereals).
Food-borne illness. Small fruits such as berries appear to be a growing source of contamina-
tion by disease-causing organisms such as E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella. Common methods
Strawberries