Cherry
Food · Fruit · Food, Typed Supps
Fresh, frozen and canned cherries are the same fruit with very different amounts of added sugar.
Stage by stage
- Intake (Skin broken by chewing): Most of the colour and polyphenol content sits in the skin and is released as the fruit is chewed.
- Stomach (Sugars released): Natural sugars are freed from the fruit matrix; syrup-packed cherries add sucrose that sits outside that matrix.
- Absorption (Sugars and vitamin C taken up): Sugars, potassium and a modest amount of vitamin C absorb in the small intestine.
- Large intestine (Fermented by gut bacteria): Fibre and unabsorbed anthocyanins are fermented in the colon, producing the phenolic metabolites that reach the blood.
Time to effect
- Days to weeks: Any studied recovery or sleep effect required a week of twice-daily tart cherry concentrate, not a single serving of fruit.
Allergens
None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.
Eating patterns
Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free.
In season
June to August in the northern hemisphere, December to February in the southern.
Satiety
150 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — high. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.
Environmental footprint
1.1 kg CO2e and 199 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Other fruit" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.
Cost band
Mid — roughly £9 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.
Key nutrients
Nutrition per 100g
- Calories: 74
- Protein: 1.1g
- Carbohydrate: 16.9g
- of which sugars: 15.2g
- Fat: 0g
- of which saturated: 0g
- Fibre: 1.4g
- Sodium: 0mg
Food vs. supplement
Tart cherry capsules and concentrates deliver a dose that whole sweet cherries cannot approach; whole cherries deliver fibre, water and potassium that the concentrate largely strips out. They are not substitutes for each other in either direction.
Kitchen tip
Drain syrup-packed cherries before use, and treat frozen pitted cherries as close to fresh — freezing damages the cell walls, which helps in cooking and costs nothing nutritionally.
Common myth
"Cherries help you sleep and speed up muscle recovery." In reality: Those claims come from concentrated sour Montmorency cherry juice taken twice a day for a week, and even there the effects are small. Sweet cherries eaten from a punnet are a good fruit, but they are not the intervention that was tested.
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