Aronia Berries are also known as Chokeberries, and both the black and red varieties have gained fame in the past. While red chokeberries taste good enough to eat directly off the bush, (and is common in jams in the US) black chokeberries are where all the health benefits are hiding. Aronia melanocarpa, as it is scientifically known, was used since prehistory for its' very dark pigment in the ink and dye industries. It's not sweet enough on it's own to taste good, but when sweetend aronia berries make a fine jam or juice. |  |
Only more recently was the extremely high antioxidant level in melanocarpa discovered, specifically it's impressivly high levels of anthocyanins. Although some ORAC scores don't show it, aronia's H-ORAC (hydrophilic-ORAC) score as published by the USDA is off the charts making it an antioxidant powerhouse.
Chokeberries are also full of many other different kinds of antioxidants, covering most every kind of flavonoid known to science. There have already been some tests on Aronia versus Cancer and more famously, aronia versus inflammation. Sadly the aronia berry as a superfruit has only been known of for a few short years and therefore the research on it is young. However, growning natively in the United States, plenty of first-rate scientists will have full access to aronia berries for testing when they get around to it.
Last week we showed a YouTube film here about a Polish Aronia orchard, and since then I’ve gotten one or two emails from fellow Americans saying something along the lines of: “What are we, chopped liver?”
So I dug around until I found this great slideshow below of an event celebrating Aronia at Iowa’s Sawmill Hollow [...]
I found this video on YouTube called “the Aronia Song,” although I couldn’t make out a single song in it as it sounded like a bunch of different song clips put together around the life of some Polish teen Aronia Farmers.
This video was made in the small town Podwierzbie, which is southeast of Warsaw. This [...]
The first whole 7 minutes of this film concentrate fully on Aronia’s history, and although at times a little full of hype, it does a good job of telling the actual story of aronia, which is very cool indeed. I am not a representative, nor is there any contact information for any Oki rep on this film.
