Improve Your Kidney Health With Blue Or Purple Colored Foods » Natural News Blogs

Improve Your Kidney Health With Blue Or Purple Colored Foods

Your kidneys work very hard every day. Why not give them some love through the food you eat? Did you know that purple or blue foods are nature’s best kidney healing foods?

They are bursting with anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidizing phytonutrients, called anthocyanidins, to heal your kidneys naturally. This powerful antioxidant is what gives these foods their purple or blue color.

Having purple or blue foods on your plate at least once a day will not only improve your kidney health, but will keep your blood vessels healthy, prevent ageing, improve short-term memory, and may help prevent several types of cancer

1. Purple Cabbage

Cabbage is a master healer as it comes to protecting your gut and kidneys. Purple cabbage makes a tasty and quite sweet kidney healing juice compared to its green brother, which has more bitter aftertaste. Next to its kidney healing properties, purple cabbage is loaded with fiber, folic acid, vitamin B6, C, and K.

Kidney Healing Cabbage Juice: juice ¼ green apple, 3 cups purple cabbage, and 1 head fennel.

2. Blueberries

Blueberries are amongst the most nutrient-dense food sources out there. They work great in smoothies, cereal, raw refrigerator jams, and muffins. Or opt for fresh unsweetened blueberry juice to give your kidneys a break.

3. Black Plums

Black plums contain more protective antioxidants than red. Pick the ones that are darkest in color, as they will contain the most antioxidants. To make a healing summer treat, pit and freeze plums and puree them for a quick and healing plum sorbet.

4. Blackberries

Just as blueberries, blackberries are loaded with antioxidants to improve kidney health. Use them in smoothies or as a topping on your cereal or oatmeal.

5. Beets

Beets help to pre-filter the blood, reduce stress on the kidneys, and help prevent or dissolve calcium oxalate stones. Check out my previous article for a kidney and liver cleansing juice recipe[1].

6. Black or Kidney Beans

Its kidney shape and name already suggest which organ will benefit most by adding these to your diet on a regular basis. They have been used for ages as an effective remedy to reduce and prevent kidney stones.

Black bean kidney tonic: boil the pods in purified water in a slow cooker for about 6 hours. Strain the liquid, let cool, and drink throughout the day.

7. Blue Grapes

Red or dark purple colored grapes contain the most healing antioxidants to prevent oxidation, formation of blood cloths, inflammation, and help your kidneys to work more efficiently.

8. Other Purple Or Blue Kidney-Friendly Foods

  • Black Quinoa
  • Seaweed
  • Black or dark purple Rice
  • Eggplant
  • Purple Corn
  • Purple Carrots
  • Purple sweet potato
  • Raisins
  • Mulberries
  • Elderberries

Your kidneys love blue and purple food. So add more color to your plate and heal your kidneys and whole body from the inside out.

Value of Washington organic farm crops rising, acreage shrinking

KENNEWICK, Wash. (AP) — For the first time, people seek out Gary Middleton to buy his organic fruit.

That’s something that has taken Middleton, who farms about 100 acres of organic apples, cherries and blueberries near Eltopia, about 13 years to accomplish, and is among the reasons he plans to continue to stay organic.

The number of organic acres farmed in the state is dropping, from almost 105,000 in 2009 to an estimated 88,100 in 2012, according to a recent study by Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources.

But the value of the state’s organic crops is rising.

It grew by 20 percent from 2010-11, to $284.5 million, the study said. That’s the highest value in seven years.

Eastern Washington counties accounted for about 82 percent of that value.

Some of the drop in acreage may be because farmers have realized the amount of work, expense and challenge involved with farming organically, said Middleton of Middleton Organic Orchards.

Organic agriculture is more labor-intensive, requiring hand thinning and hand weeding, he explained. At the peak, when blueberries and cherries are harvested simultaneously, he’ll need about 250 people.

Organic prices have to be high enough to cover those increased costs.

“I love being an organic farmer, but it still comes down to economics,” he said.

Organic farmers don’t use herbicides, and are limited in the pesticides and fertilizers they can use.

Middleton uses compost for fertilizer, which requires more planning when it comes to nutrients. It doesn’t deliver as much nitrogen as fast as synthetic products.

But organic agriculture seems a good fit for stewardship of the land, he said. He’s noticed that the beneficial insects, including bees and ladybugs, have increased.

Most of the blueberries still were green last week, although a few showed a hint of a bluish-purple hue.

Middleton’s irrigation system was going on and off in a 15-minute rotation to cool his apples and blueberries and to suppress sunburn.

The blueberry and cherry harvests will likely start around the end of this month, Middleton said. Blueberries will be color-picked by hand, with the same bushes picked three to four times.

Middleton’s goal is to serve an “elite” fresh market, with stores like Costco and Whole Foods carrying his blueberries, he said.

Blueberry harvest can last a month, and cherry harvest can last for about 14 days, he said. His cherries, like others in the area, were hit by frost damage, slashing the expected yield.

After those harvests are complete, Middleton and his crew will move on to the Gala, Golden Delicious and Granny Smith apples. Frost also might affect those yields, but he said the blueberries seemed to come through the cold — which dropped as low as 23 degrees — just fine.

Increasing yields from fruit trees could be a part of why the value of the state’s organic crops continue to grow, said David Granatstein, a sustainable agriculture specialist at WSU’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Granatstein completed the WSU study with Elizabeth Kirby, a sustainable agriculture research associate.

It’s also possible that some fruit that was sold as conventional because of better prices is now being sold as organic, Granatstein said.

Sales and prices of organic crops continue to increase, suggesting that the market is not saturated, he said.

Grant County continues to lead the state in organic production with about 22,000 acres and a 2011 crop value of $87.8 million, up about 37 percent from the year before.

Benton County has the second most acreage, at about 7,800 in 2012, down about 10 percent from the year before. The 2011 crop value was about $25.8 million, up 17 percent from the previous year.

Franklin County had an estimated 3,200 acres in 2012, a 2 percent drop. Yet value climbed by nearly 37 percent to $18 million.

Organic acres and sales for other area counties were:

* Adams County, relatively unchanged at about 2,500 organic acres in 2012, with value growing by nearly 37 percent to more than $6 million in 2011.

* Walla Walla County, down by 4 percent to about 2,200 acres in 2012, with value up 10 percent to $22 million.

* Yakima County, up 5 percent at about 5,700 acres in 2012, with value increasing 23 percent to $23.4 million in 2011.

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