White currants, bred by breeders, unlike black and red, are not often found in gardeners, however, they have a number of valuable properties and features. It looks like the more common red, which is great for canning for the winter. Unlike red, white currants are best consumed fresh. Golden berries are good not only as a very useful dessert, they have found application in folk medicine. It is worthwhile to learn more about what white currant has beneficial properties and contraindications.
Berry features
This is a plant from the gooseberry family. It grows in the form of a bush with a height of about 1.5 m and above. Fruits are round, small in size, white, sometimes with a yellowish tinge, forming clusters.
On the bushes, the berries last longer than other currants. More than other varieties, yield and good tolerance of the dry season has white currants.
The taste properties of this berry are very good - it has a sweet and sour taste and delicate texture, generally resembling red currants, but with thinner and softer hues.
Popular varieties
Variety White berry Potapenko is considered one of the best. Berries of this variety can stay on bushes for a long time, until winter, while maintaining aroma and taste. The bushes themselves are low, the fruits are small white-yellow hue.
Belyanka is no less popular and wonderful variety, the yield of the bush is up to 10 kg of berries. The variety is frost-resistant, berries are yellowish, the taste is tart, sweet and sour.
Nutritional value and composition
The taste of white currant as a dessert berry is an order of magnitude higher than that of the common black, but the therapeutic and preventive effect of the product is much inferior, because the content of vitamin C is 5 times lower in black than in black. But in terms of the content of potassium and iron useful to the heart and blood vessels, the benefits of white currant are more noticeable.
The composition of these berries contains important acids, pectin, which makes it possible to prepare jelly from them, fiber useful for digestion, carbohydrates with proteins and other compounds useful to the body. And also vitamins A, C, P, group B, useful folic acid, which gives the berry a golden color beta-carotene, useful for the nervous system magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, sodium. At the same time, calorie content is low - only 40 kcal per hundred grams of berries, which makes it possible to successfully use white currants in diet food.
The benefits of white currant for the body
In addition to the above nutrients, in white currant there is a huge amount of pectins that have a beneficial effect on blood quality and help to remove harmful salts of heavy metals from the body, which is its main nutritional value. A delicious vitamin table present is especially useful for children and the elderly, since such currants do not contain natural, but allergenic dyes, help the heart, improve blood composition, and a large percentage of vitamin P improves the functioning of liver cells, promotes activation of the adrenal cortex and bile, strengthens the walls of blood vessels.
Vitamin E, which is highly found in white berries, makes them truly an elixir for prolonging youth. Its antioxidant properties slow down the inevitable aging processes, improve our reproductive functions, protect against cataracts, and fight free radicals.
Vitamin A, also found in white currant, strengthens the immune system and vision, and prevents tumor processes and lung damage, including in smokers.
Vitamins of group B in the composition of berries strengthen the vessels that nourish the brain, which helps withstand stress and psychological stress, improve memory functions. Berries of white currant are very useful for men, because they increase erectile function.
Contraindications
Now we know what useful white currant has. And she also has contraindications. Despite its obvious benefits, its use should be limited or even eliminated if gastritis is diagnosed, especially with an increased level of acidity, or an ulcer. It is forbidden to use white currants (like any other) to people with blood diseases: with low clotting, hemophilia. It is contraindicated in patients with hepatitis. This is how the benefits and harms of white currants can affect the body.
The benefits of berries
The best thing is to eat fresh berries directly from the bush. So it is most tasty and healthy. If you eat a handful of these berries a day, then you can strengthen the immune system, which will allow you to stay healthy for a long time.
But with high yields and if desired, you can make tasty and healthy drinks from whitecurrant berries, like from any other, like fruit drinks, juice, compote and kissel, or make jam, jam or berry puree. Delicious mousse or jelly will be good. In all these dishes, you can use white currants in combination with other varieties of currants, as well as any fruit to taste. In jam, the combination of white and red currants is especially successful.
Traditional medicine offers a decoction of berries as an antipyretic, for coughing, for rheumatism, atherosclerosis, for anemia and for diseases when it is necessary to increase the intake of vitamins with food. Hypertensive patients are advised a decoction of dried berries. However, do not forget that whitecurrant has useful properties and contraindications, so with hypertension do not get carried away by eating it.
Juice and fruit drink
Juices and fruit drinks from white currant berries increase appetite, improve the digestive tract, and reduce bad cholesterol. Whitecurrant juice contains many active nutrients, but due to the lack of allergenic coloring pigments, juice from berries is practically safe for people prone to allergic reactions.
Whitecurrant leaves: useful properties and contraindications
This is a storehouse of nutrients. And not only berries, but also leaves. They can be added to tea leaves for aroma and additional fortification of the drink. The fragrant leaves of white currant, like black currant, have bactericidal properties, reduce fermentation and can be successfully used in pickles and marinades.
The leaves contain a very high percentage of vitamin C, which allows them to be used for cosmetic purposes in traditional medicine recipes in the form of masks and medicinal lotions for external use.
Teas and decoctions from the leaves, when ingested, remove toxins, radioactive elements, an excess of uric and oxalic acids. Decoctions are useful in urolithiasis, promote scarring of ulcers, and are used in the prevention and comprehensive treatment of anemia.
Shrub branches mixed with oats are used as a drink to enrich the body with vitamins, increase red blood cell production, increase immunity and tone.
Leaves can be added to the salad and simply washed and chewed, helping to cleanse the mouth and strengthen the gums, because they have a bactericidal and strengthening effect on body tissues, including gums and mucous membranes. White currant has such beneficial properties and contraindications.
Simple and quick berries recipes
Morse is an excellent light vitamin and refreshing drink that preserves the benefits of fresh berries. It can be made from a separate type of currant, or can be mixed from different varieties to taste, including in a mixture with other berries.
The simplest and fastest way is to cook a “lazy” fruit drink. To do this, add one or two tablespoons of currant jam or jam to a glass of cold or warm water.
And in order to prepare the jam itself in the most optimal variant according to the ratio of vitamins and microelements, all prepared berries are washed, dried and scrolled in a meat grinder or mashed with a blender. When chopping, you can add two or three oranges with peel, pitted, when chopped. This will give it an exquisite aroma, brightness of color, in addition, this action additionally vitamins the berry mass. The resulting mashed potatoes need to be weighed and covered with sugar one to one. Additionally - four more glasses of granulated sugar are carefully mixed into the mass. When all the sugar has dispersed, the currants should be laid out in previously sterilized jars, pouring a thin layer of sugar on top (this will help prevent mold), cork with lids and put in the refrigerator for storage.
So, it is obvious that, like any other berry, whitecurrant has useful properties and contraindications. Consider them when harvesting.