Elderberry

Elderwhat?  That was my reaction to finding out that all those pesky dark purple berries that stained my deck every September growing on a dozen or so trees in my yard were actually an edible berry packed full of nutrition and medical promise.  Called elderberries or sambucus, I tasted a few against my husband's advice before I fully researched these little pencil eraser size edibles and they are not all that sweet by themselves.  You need to cook them with sugar to sweeten them so maybe they have drawbacks but they sure do grow plentifully and without pesticides and fertilizer here in Colorado.  They make excellent jams and jellies according to a variety of jelly/jam makers.


photo courtesy John Nyberg

Let's look at them from a nutritional perspective though.  According to the ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbence Capacity) scale that measures antioxidant power, blueberries have a very good ORAC rating of 6,552.  Elderberries have a super impressive ORAC score of 14,697! One cup of elderberries provide 52 mg / 87% of the RDA of Vitamin C.  Elderberries are also high in Vitamins A and B6.

According to a monograph I read at thorne.com, elderberry appears to have significant antiviral properties.  This monograph states that an Israeli virologist Madeleine Mumcuoglu, Ph.D. discovered that elderberry neutralizes the abilility of the influenza virus to replicate, thus shortening the life of the flu virus significantly. 

Elderberry has been around for ages.  It's nutritional and medicinal abilities somehow fell off the mainstream radar for awhile.  As I researched this shiny berry, there does seem to be a resurgence of favor towards it.  Fortunately you can now find elderberry through Nature's Way products available at your local health food store.