Brook and I love a good pairing. Usually it's ancient + modern. This time it's a little different — an ingredient we both love just as much on our plates as in our products. I have always considered myself a healthy eater. But for a long time, I was looking at food in broad categories: berries and vegetables were good. Fresh was better than processed. It was my integrative doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering that made me start looking more closely at individual ingredients—and asking which ones had unusually good résumés. When she speaks to me, she is incredibly fast - as if to share a lifetime's worth of information into a single telehealth conversation. So, I'm always furiously taking notes. She ran through a list of berries and there was one in particular that stood out. It's a berry that looks like a blueberry, but with a richer color. Unlike a blueberry, this berry is blue-black throughout. That intense color comes from a particularly high concentration of anthocyanins - which have been widely studied for their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity. This mysterious berry is the bilberry. |
