A study conducted by the Agricultural Research Service’s Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences indicates that eating blueberries may help prevent atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. When researchers spiked the diet of 15 lab mice with freeze-dried blueberry powder (comparable to a half-cup of the berries) for 20 weeks, they found that the size of harmful lesions (plaque) measured on two sites in their aortas were 39 and 58 percent less than for 15 mice in a control group.

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture