Inside our berries? A shot of vitamins! đź’Ş
We think it’s clear: Strawberries are good (or at least they should be!). They’re sweet, fleshy, fragrant. And even better, they can be a great energy source for your body. Even if eating only strawberries probably wouldn’t give you the strength to make it through a marathon with flying colors, they can provide many of the vitamins you need during the day! PF (our resident biology expert) is here to explain it all.
- #1 — The (secret) recipe for the perfect strawberry 🍓
- #2 — No need for whipped cream, our berries are sweet as is! 🍧
- #3 — Inside our berries? A shot of vitamins! 💪
What are vitamins? 🤔
They’re the molecules that are essential for human metabolism. They notably serve in the activities of numerous enzymes and protect us from things like oxidants.
What are oxidants?
Oxidants are “reactive” forms of oxygen that attack various components of our body and accelerate the aging process. Oxidants come from different sources that can be more or less natural.
Breathing is one of our bodily functions that generates a large amount of oxidants. There are also more avoidable sources of oxidants, for example diets that are too high in fat or sugar, or pollution that comes from our environment (one of the most common oxidants is nitric oxide, produced by exhaust fumes).
Our body is largely able to neutralize oxidants, but it’s also possible to give it a hand by bringing in antioxidants from our food. The best known antioxidant is vitamin C. The majority of antioxidants that are found in fruits and vegetables are part of the large family of polyphenols.
In general, we mammals (including cows, pigs, dolphins, and you, dear reader) aren’t able to produce all of the vitamins needed to maintain our body on our own. And so the solution is in our food.
Identifying vitamins đź“‹
There are more than 10 families of vitamins, all playing different, precise roles. We don’t want to give a whole lesson about vitamins here (ok, we kind of want to), but there are a few key vitamins that we want to touch on in this article:
- Vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
- Vitamin B9 (folic acid)
- Vitamins B1 and B2 (thiamine and riboflavin)
In general, fruits and vegetables have significant levels of vitamins. That’s exactly what led to the message that you’ve likely seen and heard many times: “Eat 5 fruits and vegetables per day”.
A bit of history
Let’s go back to anytime between the 15th to the 19th centuries. Back then, vitamin C levels played a major role in the development of maritime empires. Crews who set out to sea for long periods (whether for trade or war) were decimated by illnesses linked to vitamin deficiencies (the most well-known, scurvy, is linked to vitamin C).
Taking the case of two famous explorers, we see that Vasco de Gama (1489) lost 120 sailors out of 160 over the course of 11 months, while Magellan (1519) lost 247 sailors out of 265 over the course of 3 years, principally due to scurvy. It was only in 1747 that James Lind, aboard the HMS Salisbury, would conduct an experiment that showed that oranges and lemons consumed while at port cured scurvy.
A bit of science
It’s interesting to note that by looking to produce a concentrated lemon syrup (a cooked juice that could be stored), Lind eliminated the beneficial effects that he had previously demonstrated with fresh fruits.
Thus there has always been an issue of conserving and transporting fresh fruits. We’ll come back to that in a later article.
Vitamins and health đź’Š
It’s highly unlikely that today you’ll find yourself lost at sea with only hard tack and salted meat to eat. But you still must have regular access to sufficient doses of vitamins through your food.
5 fruits and vegetables per day
European recommendations are for a daily dose of 75 mg of vitamin C for women and 90 mg for men. To give you an idea, an orange has an average of 53 mg of vitamin C (between 40–80 mg per 100 g) while an apple has “only” 8 mg of vitamin C. Red fruits and citrus fruits are those that bring forward the most vitamin C.
How much? By eating two large strawberries that are 57 g each, you’ll have covered between 60–80% of your daily need for vitamin C.
Vitamin C is particularly important in stimulating our immune system, maintaining the structure of our blood vessels, and assimilating iron. And while fruits and vegetables are sources of vitamin C, they contain it in varying quantities. Citrus fruits and red fruits (including strawberries) are particularly high in it. Here are some numbers to give you an idea 👇
We should note one thing regarding methodology, as the standards recorded by the ANSES and the USDA are quite a bit higher than those that we’ve measured. There are multiple possible explanations:
- The conditions and analytical techniques
- The varieties tested
- The moment of the harvest
Analyses from these organizations are also carried out under conditions of basic research. In other words, they compile data that does not necessarily reflect the different potential varieties and real-world consumption conditions.
Agricool’s strawberries
Let’s look in more detail at the amounts of vitamins present in our berries.
Just a year ago, our results weren’t nearly this high, being more around 30 mg/100 g. The amount of vitamins was already equal to what we could get in the supermarket, but that wasn’t the level we were looking to achieve. If we keep our mission in mind, providing excellent strawberries, we need to have an excellent level of vitamins. We thus optimized the parameters in our growing process to increase the amount of vitamin C in our strawberries without affecting the concentrations of other elements.
Our most recent results, which you can see on the table below, are already much better. In some analyses performed in our testing areas (zones that allow us to conduct small-scale tests that we can then deploy to our cooltainers), we’ve been able to get to 57.4 mg / 100 g. But we think we can do even better. There have been published results showing strawberries with up to 88 mg / 100 g. Challenge accepted!
And all the other vitamins?
We’ve also run analyses for other vitamins: B1, B2 and B9 (also known as thiamine, riboflavin, and folate). These are found in lower concentrations in strawberries, being measured in micrograms. These analyses were conducted less often and we’re still at a preliminary level of results. But our results show that our B1, B2, and B9 vitamin levels are equal to or above the ANSES standards:
Want to keep going? 🚀
To have absolutely incredible fruit, other elements must also be taken into account: other antioxidants, fatty acids, minerals, trace metals… We’ve got a bunch of results for these as well, and we’ll be happy to share them with you soon.
PS: Ask us about total antioxidants, please!
