Wild Blueberries in the News

The MIND diet was developed by researchers at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center, whose recent study found that certain foods could help prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers spent two years developing the MIND diet, which includes brain healthy foods like berries and greens.

Can a cup of blueberries keep the doctor away? Maybe.

Researchers conducted a random, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 40 postmenopausal women ages 45 to 65 with high blood pressure. Half ate 22 grams of freeze-dried blueberry powder (equivalent to a cup of blueberries) daily for eight weeks. The others consumed an identical-looking and tasting placebo.

As you know, we live for our produce! So when the Wild Blueberry Association of North America  invited us to join them for a press trip in Bar Harbor Maine with fellow registered dietitians and bloggers to visit the wild blueberry fields, learn all about their health benefits and enjoy incredible Wild Blueberry inspired meals, we jumped at the opportunity!

Good things come in small packages. The same can be said of the tiny wild Maine blueberry being harvested this time of year on otherwise barren rocky fields. In fact, the land in northern Maine where these short scruffy bushes grow is referred to as “the barrens.”

Todd Merrill’s family-owned company, based in Ellsworth, has been in business since 1925, and he’s a fourth-generation blueberry farmer/processor. But he spent the first half of his career working elsewhere and returned to run the company just seven years ago. Since then he’s led Merrill Blueberry Farms to become the first – and only – company in the country to process organic wild blueberries for the frozen market. We talked to him about innovations, visits from rabbis and why Maine teenagers should get themselves up to Ellsworth and start raking.

On a cloudy August day on the blueberry barrens, about a dozen female bloggers from around the country, most of them registered dietitians, picked up metal blueberry rakes and obligingly stooped to conquer Maine’s wild blueberry.

Learn what makes the  little lowbush Wild Blueberry so special and different from the “tame” highbush cultivated blueberry in Bob Duschesne’s Wild Maine interview with blueberry specialist, Dr David Yarborough from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Service.

Joining me on the trip were fellow dietitians and nutrition bloggers/writers, as well as a number of staff from the Wild Blueberry Association and its PR firm. It was a really great group – I loved chatting with everyone throughout the trip!

We are in the middle of Maine’s wild blueberry season, which, thanks to plenty of rain and successful pollination (way to go, bees!) is projected to be a banner one. In Washington County, Maine’s wild blueberry country, pickers are busy harvesting the tiny native berries from more than 60,000 acres of barrens.

Todd Merrill’s family-owned company, based in Ellsworth, has been in business since 1925, and he’s a fourth-generation blueberry farmer/processor. But he spent the first half of his career working elsewhere and returned to run the company just seven years ago.