White currant: useful properties and contraindications. Leaves of white currant

White currant, bred by breeders, unlike black and red, rarely occurs in gardeners, but it has a number of valuable properties and characteristics. It is similar to the more common red, which goes well for canning for the winter. In contrast to red, white currant is better to use fresh. Golden berries are good not only as a very useful dessert, they also found application in folk medicine. It is worth to learn in more detail what the white currant has useful properties and contraindications.

Features of berries

This plant is from the family of gooseberry. It grows in the form of a shrub about 1.5 m high and higher. Fruits are round in shape, small in size, white, sometimes with a yellowish hue, forming bunches.

On the bushes the berries last longer than the currants of other species. More than other varieties, the yield and good tolerance of the dry season is white currant.

The taste properties of this berry are very good - it has an sour-sweet taste and a tender consistency, generally reminiscent of red currants, but with more subtle and soft hues.

Popular varieties

Variety White Potapenko is considered one of the best. The berries of this variety can last a long time, till the winter, keep on the bushes, preserving the aroma and taste qualities. The bushes themselves are not high, the fruits are small in a white and yellow hue.

Bellyanka is no less popular and a wonderful variety, the yield of the bush is up to 10 kg of berries. The variety is frost-hardy, the 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 a common black, but the treatment-and-prophylactic effect of the product is much inferior, because in white is a 5-fold lower content of vitamin C than in black. But according to the content of potassium and iron useful to the heart and vessels, the benefits of white currant are palpable.

These berries contain important acids, pectin, which makes it possible to prepare jelly from them, useful for digestion of cellulose, there are also carbohydrates with proteins and other compounds useful to the body. And vitamins A, C, P, group B, useful folic acid, giving golden berries a beta-carotene, useful for the nervous system magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, sodium. At the same time, the calorie content is low - only 40 kcal per hundred gram of berries, which makes it possible to successfully use white currant in dietary nutrition.

Benefits of white currants for the body

In addition to the above useful substances, in white currant a large number of pectins, beneficial for the quality of blood and helping to remove harmful salts of heavy metals from the body, which is its main nutritional value. A delicious vitamin gift to the table is especially useful for children and the elderly, since such currant does not contain any natural but allergenic dyes, it helps the heart work, improves blood composition, and a large percentage of vitamin P improves the functioning of the liver cells, promotes the adrenal cortex and bile, Strengthens the walls of blood vessels.

Vitamin E, in a high degree found in white berries, makes them a true elixir for the extension of youth. Its antioxidant properties slow down the inevitable aging processes, improve our reproductive functions, guard against cataracts, and fight free radicals.

Vitamin A, also contained in the white currant, strengthens immunity and vision, prevents tumor processes and lung damage, including in smokers.

B vitamins in the berries strengthen the vessels that nourish the brain, which helps to withstand stress and psychological stress, improve the function of memory. Berries of white currants are very useful to men, as they increase erectile function.

Contraindications

Now we know what white currant has useful properties. And she also has contraindications. Despite the obvious benefit, 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 currant (like any other) people with blood diseases: with low coagulation, hemophilia. It is contraindicated in patients with hepatitis. That's the benefit and harm of white currant can have an impact on the body.

Benefits of berries

The best is the use of berries directly from the bush in a fresh form. So it is most tasty and useful. If a day to eat a handful of these berries, you can strengthen the immune system, which will allow you to stay healthy for a long time.

But with high yields and if desired, from white currant berries, as well as from any other, you can prepare tasty and healthy drinks: fruit juice, juice, compote and jelly or boil jam, jams or berry puree. Tasty mousse or jelly will be good. In all these dishes you can use white currant in combination with other currant varieties, as well as any fruit to taste. The jam is especially successful combination of white and red currants.

Traditional medicine decoction of berries offers as an antipyretic, when coughing, with rheumatism, atherosclerosis, from anemia and in diseases, when it is necessary to increase the intake of vitamins with food. Hypertonics advise a decoction of dried berries. However, do not forget that the white currant has useful properties and contraindications, so when hypertension is not fond of eating it.

Juice and Morse

Juices and fruit drinks from white currant berries increase appetite, improve the work of the digestive tract, reduce harmful cholesterol. The juice of the white currant contains a lot of active nutrients, but because of the lack of allergenic color pigments, juice from berries is practically safe for people prone to allergic reactions.

Leaves of white currant: useful properties and contraindications

It is a storehouse of useful substances. And not only berries, but also leaves. They can be added to tea brew for flavor and extra vitaminization of the drink. The fragrant leaves of white currant, like black, have bactericidal properties, reduce fermentation and can be successfully used in pickles and marinades.

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 of leaves, when ingested, remove slags, radioactive elements, excess urinary and oxalic acids. Decoctions are useful in urolithiasis, promote cicatrization of ulcers, are used in the prevention and comprehensive treatment of anemia.

Branching shrubs in a mixture with oats are used in the form of a drink to enrich the body with vitamins, increase the production of red blood cells, increase immunity and tone.

The leaves can be added to the salad and simply washed and chewed, helping to clean the oral cavity and strengthen the gums, because they have a bactericidal and strengthening effect on body tissues, including gums and mucous membranes. Here such white currant has useful properties and contraindications.

Recipes for simple and quick berry preparation

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, and can be mixed from different varieties to taste, including in a mixture with other berries.

The easiest and fastest is to prepare a "lazy" mors. For this, one or two tablespoons of currant jam or jam should be added to a glass of cold or warm water.

And to make the jam itself in the most optimal variant for the ratio of vitamins and trace elements, all the prepared berries are washed, dried and scrolled in a meat grinder or blended with a blender. To the currant can be added by grinding two or three oranges with peel, pitted. This will give her an exquisite aroma, the brightness of the color, in addition, this action additionally vitaminizes the berry mass. The resulting mashed potatoes should be weighed and covered with sugar one to one. Additionally - four more cups of sugar are carefully mixed into the mass. When all the sugar is gone, the currant should be spread over previously sterilized jars, pouring a thin layer of sugar on top (this will help prevent the appearance of mold), cork with lids and put in the refrigerator for storage.

So, it is obvious that, like any other berry, has white currant beneficial properties and contraindications. Consider them when harvesting.