Aussie Plums On Stage For Weight Loss Trial

There’s a new Giant Plum out there and it’s got food science researchers in something of a tizzy – albeit a happy one – over prospects that its juice could help folks with weight retention tendencies lose the extra pounds. And it all revolves around a new Australian Plum…

Queen Garnet Plums on the tree. Health by the fistful?

The Queen Garnet Plum (QGP), which produces fist-sized fruits, is plum-full of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, and researchers at the University of Manitoba say it may be able to prevent or even reverse diseases mediated by our metabolism.

The QGP was created by accident by plant breeders at the University of South Queensland (USQ) in Australia when they were tying to come up with a naturally disease resistant Plum. But it turned out to contain three to six times the anthocyanins (an anti-oxidant chemical family) that Blueberries have. And that’s saying something, as Blueberries have been hailed as a super fruit for the very reason that they’re high in anti-oxidants.

Anthocyanins are found in the purple pigments of Fruits and Veggies including Blueberries, Raspberries, Black Rice, Black Soybeans, Sea Buckthorn, Purple Corn and Purple Carrots. They’re all good for you, of course, but you’d have to consume up to six times as much of them as you would QGP juice to get the same benefit it can apparently bestow.

What they did…

The QGP odyssey started with an experiment by USQ researchers who gave obese rats – and these guys are bred to have a tendency toward obesity – a few drops of QGP juice in their drinking water. After just eight weeks, the rats had returned to normal weight and their blood pressure had subsided, even though they continued to eat a high-Calorie diet.

What they’re doing…

Now, Dr. Peter Jones, Director of the Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals at the University of Manitoba, is preparing a human trial of QGP juice.

Two groups of Canadian subjects aged 65 and over – considered more susceptible to high blood pressure and overweight – will take part in a five-month study in which they’ll eat special purple Cookies every day for two months, take a month off, then eat purple Cookies for another two months.

The trick is, one group will get purple Cookies containing QGP Juice and the other will get similar Cookies containing only purple food colouring. None of the participants will know which cookies they are getting.

Jones and his team will monitor subjects’ weight and blood pressure throughout the trial. Jones hopes human subjects will react as dramatically as the USQ rats did.

My take..

As usual, this new discovery comes with practical drawbacks. It’s often the case that new ‘healthy’ foods are prohibitively expensive for many members of ‘the other 99 percent’. Take the Mediterranean Diet. I’d love to go with it heart and soul. But the cost of daily Seafood and mounds of fresh Produce is unmanageable. Purple Fruits and Veggies are already among the costliest produce items available to North Americans. I have, previously, bypassed them because of cost.

But, now, I’m going to conduct my own clinical test of the ‘anthocyanins’ theory. If I could lose a significant amount of weight and reduce my blood pressure by eating a significant amount of purple Fruit, I’d choose that process over taking powerful blood pressure meds and limiting my diet to 1,200 Calories a day forever. And I’d consider the Fruit a great investment! Not only that, but think of how much stress we could lift from the health care system if we all did that…

Get into the act…

If you are a Canadian 65 years of age or older, you can e-mail Jones at: healthyaging@umanitoba.ca or phone him at 204-474-9989 to volunteer for the study.

~ Maggie J.