Wild Blueberries Can Literally Make You HAPPY
Our wild blueberry chips came to be by accident. While making our wild blueberry powder my toddler would always ask for the leftover “chips”. I would chip the dehydrated blueberries off the trays before I would grind it into powder. He thought these pieces of dehydrated blueberries were chips. I went with it because he thought he was getting a “treat” when really he was just eating a very antioxidant rich snack. Mom win! After a while the whole family started asking for these “chips”. Then I started bringing them to play groups and after seeing how much everyone loved them I thought “well maybe we are onto something here”. Voila! Fields Fields Wild Blueberry Chips were born.
My kids can’t get enough of these chips. I give them as much as they want whenever they want because you can’t get a more nutrient dense snack. Sometimes I will have an entire batch disappear before it even enters the packing station. Each batch takes 2 days to make so I really have to remind myself how important it is for them so my frustration doesn’t start to rise. I started to notice a major increase in my kids mood whenever they were munching on some blueberry chips. I chalked it up to regulating blood sugar levels aka they were just “hangry”. It caught my attention so I started offering my toddler wild blueberries or wild blueberry chips whenever he was having an off day. Every time it turned his mood around. So naturally I did a little research. What I found was astonishing! I am very much immersed in the world of wild blueberries and I did not know about this research on wild blueberries and mood (don’t worry, I will link all the studies I read below).
Wild blueberries are famous for their extremely high levels of flavonoids (a type of antioxidant) in particular anthocyanins which are what give wild blueberries their deep purple color. Antioxidants protect your body from free radicals, which are unstable molecules that can damage your cells. Over the past decade there has been extensive research documenting the positive effects of flavonoid consumption on cognition including improvements in attention, inhibition, visuospatial memory, executive function and long-term memory. Research also shows a considerable decrease in depression and anxiety when consuming wild blueberries on a regular basis.
So how do wild blueberries lift your mood? The improvements are believed to be the result of the following mechanisms: an increase in cerebral blood flow, protection against neuronal stress and/or positively stimulating neural signaling. There is a lot of buzz about this in the science world right now so I am excited to see more studies starting to come out. Basically, the more flavonoid rich your food is, the more you are supporting you and your kids mental health. Eating more wild blueberries may just be the answer you have been waiting for!
Now my kids LOVE wild blueberries so it's not hard for me to get them to indulge. They eat blueberry chips, drink blueberry juice, eat a bowl of straight up frozen wild blueberries or pile them onto some hot oatmeal. I often sneak some wild blueberry leaf tincture into their tea or cocoa too (the alcohol evaporates in hot beverages so that only the goodness of the tincture is left for them to drink). We also love smoothies in this house. Smoothies are the answer to all my health food battles with myself and my kids. If I am looking to add or increase something in our diet I throw it into a smoothie. Adding wild blueberries or blueberry power to every smoothie is so simple. Wild blueberries go with everything! We even take smoothies and put them into popsicle trays for an after dinner “treat”. It leaves everyone in the house feeling happy and ready to conquer whatever comes our way.
At the end of the day, if our kids are happy, we all are happy. It is amazing to discover what foods can improve our mood and which ones can really bring us down. Kids put it all out there so it’s easier to observe in them, but if we look close we can notice it in us too. Wild blueberries are truly a magical plant and I count my blessings everyday that I get to work with such a treasure. Cheers to wild blueberries and all the gifts those little superheroes give to us!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5331589/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25701345/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30327868/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30999017/