I’ll Have a Tart-Cherry Latte, Please

If you’ve been beverage-bereft in the wake of a federal judge’s ruling that the Pom pomegranate juice company was making fraudulent health claims in its ads, look no more. At a conference of the American College of Sports Medicine last week, researchers from Oregon Health and Science University came out firmly in support of Dr. Oz, declaring that tart cherries have “the highest anti-inflammatory content of any food” and led to significant reductions in inflammation markers in women with osteoarthritis.

Frankly, I think Dr. Oz is a charlatan, but I love cherries, and they’re just now coming into season. The tart ones can be hard to find, but bottled juice and juice concentrate is available year-round, and local farmers’ markets sometimes have tart cherries for sale. They came in extra-early this year because of the freaky weather. Juice them, or—even better—pie them. You owe it to your joints! Dr. Oz and a million online commenters swear it can cure your insomnia, too.

Or just stick with good old coffee, seeing as just about every week, some new study shows more benefits to ingesting that latte. Coffee has already been shown to reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease, stroke, Type II diabetes and breast cancer, though follow-up studies are still being done. And now the latest: Researchers from the University of South Florida and the University of Miami found that people over age 65 with higher blood caffeine levels had a reduced risk of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. “These intriguing results,” said lead author Chuanhai Cao, “suggest that older adults with mild memory impairment who drink moderate levels of coffee—about three cups a day—will not convert to Alzheimer’s disease—or at least will experience a substantial delay before converting to Alzheimer’s.” Cao went so far as to say that “moderate daily caffeine/coffee intake throughout adulthood should appreciably protect against Alzheimer’s disease later in life.” But hey, ditch the decaf—it didn’t show the same protective effects.