Raspberries are good for your health; watch out for 9/11-related stress

Still tastes like summer

One way to pretend it’s still summer all through September is to eat lots of raspberries, whose season extends into October. It’s obvious why you should eat them: They’re delicious, right? But they’re also really good for you.

Jennifer LaRue Huget

Writes the Eat, Drink & Be Healthy column and Lean & Fit e-newsletter, and blogs for The Checkup.

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Angela Ginn, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, says red raspberries are full of antioxidant phytonutrients, particularly tannin, which gives them their purplish hue. (White and black raspberries, she says, are nutritious but don’t have tannin.) Tannin may help protect against some cancers and macular degeneration, she says.

Ginn adds that raspberry seeds provide fiber. And the berries themselves, she says, are an “excellent” source of Vitamin C.

One cup of raspberries has 60 calories, a third of the fiber you need in a day and more than half your daily Vitamin C.

Ginn likes to add raspberries to her morning oatmeal and to yogurt. She recommends you toss some into a salad or “cook them down on the stove to make a glaze for chicken or pork tenderloin.” And be sure to freeze some for winter. Frozen berries are just as nutritious, Ginn says.

For recipes featuring raspberries, go to The Washington Post Recipe Finder at washingtonpost.com/recipes and search for the following:

→Raspberry Salad

→Peach, Pear and Raspberry Smoothie

→Peaches and Cream With Raspberries

A little missing sunshine

In the next few weeks, the days will become noticeably shorter. That means most of us will get less daily exposure to the sun — which means, in turn, that our bodies will produce less Vitamin D.

That’s why experts such as Edward Giovannucci of the Harvard School of Public Health recommend taking a daily Vitamin D supplement, especially for those living in the northern United States and those who don’t get outside much in fall and winter.

Giovannucci says our bodies need Vitamin D to promote calcium absorption and maintain bone health. He adds that promising research suggests Vitamin D may help prevent colorectal and breast cancers.

Giovannucci recommends that most of us add 1,000 IU (international units) of Vitamin D to our daily diets via dietary supplement. Although he joins many other nutrition experts in saying we should get most of our nutrients from foods, “foods don’t have that much Vitamin D, in general.” Even a glass of fortified milk has only about 100 IU of Vitamin D, and “it doesn’t make sense to drink 10 glasses of milk” to get your daily D, he says.

Finally, Giovannucci notes that the scientific community isn’t united in recommending 1,000 IU daily; the Institute of Medicine issued a report in November suggesting 600 IU daily.

9/11 anniversary anxiety

Most of us will mark the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, without undue anxiety. But for some, memories of that day may provoke unsettling feelings.

The earthquake that recently rattled the Washington area offered “insight into our own M.O.” when it comes to worry, says Mary Alvord, a Rockville-based psychologist and spokeswoman for the American Psychological Association. The shaking buildings and evacuations reminded some people of 9/11, causing them to panic, she says. “People who tend to be more anxious overestimate the likelihood of bad things happening,” Alvord says.