Aronia juice has some valuable ingredients to offer – in considerable quantities. You can find out what these are and how you can best use them as juice for yourself here.
Aronia juice is a little all-rounder when it comes to health. The little vitamin bomb is said to have numerous health-promoting properties. You can find out everything about the ingredients and health benefits of aronia juice as well as a recipe to make yourself in this article.
Aronia juice and the aronia berry
(Photo: CC0 / Pixabay / Cydonia)
The black-blue aronia berry has a tart taste and leaves a dry, somewhat furry feeling in the mouth. That’s why it’s not exactly popular as a snack between meals. As a juice, especially mixed with other fruit juices, it is a delicious source of many healthy nutrients.
The fruit is also called chokeberry. According to the consumer advice center, it originally comes from North America, but now comes mainly from Eastern Europe. You can also grow them in your garden or on the balcony. Its shrub is very robust and has been cultivated in Europe since the beginning of the 20th century. It can withstand temperatures down to minus 30 degrees Celsius without any problems. The plant grows up to two meters high.
The berry harvest time is between August and October. By the way, it is called chokeberry because it actually resembles an apple: both externally and when cut open. Because their seeds are arranged around the middle of the berry like those of the apple. Aronia is therefore not a berry in the botanical sense, but a pome fruit.
According to the consumer advice center, the dark color of the chokeberry comes from its high content of so-called anthocyanins, which translates to nothing other than “dark-colored flowers”. Because of its strong color, which can temporarily turn teeth and tongue blue-purple, chokeberry is often used in the food industry as a natural dye.
Aronia juice: it’s so healthy
(Photo: CC0 / Pixabay / GoranH)
Aronia juice contains a number of healthy ingredients:
- Compared to 143 other plants, aronia berries have the highest polyphenol content. Polyphenols act as antioxidants, i.e. substances that bind free radicals in the body. The polyphenols include the already mentioned anthocyanin and flavonoids, which are also contained in abundance in the berries. Scientists largely attribute the positive effects mentioned in the following points to the antioxidants.
- Scientists from Bulgaria have found that chokeberry can help diabetics lower blood sugar.
- According to a study from 2012, chokeberry helps with high cholesterol levels.
- Scientists at the University of Maryland found that some ingredients are said to prevent colon cancer – and, according to a Polish study, also breast cancer.
- The fruit makes an important contribution to preventing coronary heart disease and to the health of important organs such as the liver.
- The berries also contain vitamin C, vitamin B1, riboflavin (B2) and vitamin B6, vitamin K, calcium and magnesium, among a number of other important ingredients.
There are other various studies on the positive effects of chokeberries. However, scientists point out that some effects have not yet been proven with certainty. For example, it still needs to be proven whether aronia berries really help with diabetes and high cholesterol levels.
Although aronia juice is very healthy, there are a few things you should keep in mind when consuming it:
- Like many dark berries, aronia also contains toxic hydrogen cyanide. There are between 0.6 and 1.2 milligrams per hundred grams. For a human, 0.7 milligrams per kilogram of body weight is toxic. To get this amount you would have to eat several kilos of the berry every day – but many berries are processed into juices. Therefore, do not consume too much aronia juice every day.
- In more sensitive people, the tannin content of the berry can cause stomach pain.
- Aronia juice can also have a mild laxative effect.
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People with iron deficiency should also be careful: According to the consumer advice center, the berry contains a substance that binds iron and thus removes it from the bloodstream.
Make your own aronia juice
(Photo: CC0 / Pixabay / utroja0)
You don’t have to buy the nutrient-rich aronia juice; you can easily make it yourself. There are two methods for this:
1. Boiled Aronia Juice:
For 1 kilo of berries you need 120 grams of sugar and, if desired, a stick of cinnamon.
- Wash and pick the berries.
- Cover the cinnamon stick and berries with water in a pot and simmer for half an hour.
- Then strain the mixture through a sieve or press the berries through a clean linen cloth and collect the juice in a bowl. Since the berries are very colored, you should wear gloves when doing this.
- Boil the juice with the sugar.
- Pour the juice into sterilized bottles while it is still hot.
Aronia juice made in this way lasts for about a year.
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2. Cold Aronia Juice:
If you want to treat the berries more gently, you can also make the juice cold. But then it doesn’t last that long.
- Grind the berries in a blender and then pour boiled water over them.
- Leave the whole thing at room temperature for a day.
- Strain the mixture through a clean linen cloth and sweeten it to taste – for example with maple syrup or agave syrup.
Extra tips:
- It’s best to use brown bottles, which let in less light so that the ingredients are optimally preserved. Also store the juice in a cool, dark place.
- You don’t have to throw away the squeezed berries, you can dry them and use them for tea.
- Mix the juice with other fruit juices. This softens the bitter taste.
- You can also make aronia juice with a steam juicer.
- Not in the mood for juice? Here are even more suggestions on how you can process aronia berries.
Read more on Techzle\.com:
- Make your own elderflower syrup: a quick recipe
- Acai berries: This is really behind the superfood
- Planting sea buckthorn: This is what you need to keep in mind for a rich harvest
Edited by Jennifer Watzek
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