Strawberry Products

I have always been a strawberry lover and wanted to see if strawberries had a high level of anthocyanins, ascorbic acid, and phenols that can help fight against heart disease, cancer and other diseases. For my critique I read an article about strawberries. Aaby et. al believed that achenes, strawberry seeds, help to increase the level of phenols, ascorbic acid, and anthocyanins in the strawberries. The study also wanted to see if having a higher level of achenes can help to keep the fruit from deteriorating over time, since a lot of strawberry consumption is through jams, etc. The researchers used three types of strawberry product: flesh, pureed whole berries, and achene-rich.
The three types of product were run through tests for ascorbic acid levels, total phenolics, FRAP (ferric reducing activity power) assay, ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) assay, and HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography) at eight and sixteen weeks of storage to see how the phenolic, ascorbic acid, and anthocyanin levels deteriorate with time. This study showed that achene-rich products had some increased levels of stability in certain phenols over time, but overall the study was not conclusive that achenes help to increase or lessen the degree of deterioration to the fruit. However the study did find that while storage and processing caused decay in anthocyanin, ascorbic acid, certain phenolic compounds and antioxidant activities stayed quite stable throughout the study.

Aaby, K.; Wrolstad, R.E.; Eekeberg, D.; Skrede, G. Polyphenol Composition and Antioxidant Activity in Strawberry Purees; Impact of Achene Level of Storage. J. Agric. Food Chem. 2007, 55, 5156-5166.