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CRANBERRIES
If you're prone to bladder infections, drink plenty of cranberry juice -- or so goes the popular wisdom. A few years ago Jerry Avorn, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, put the juice to the test in a study of 153 elderly women. Half drank ten ounces of sweetened cranberry juice a day; the others drank a taste-alike beverage. The cranberry juice drinkers cut their risk of developing bacterial urinary tract infections by 40 percent compared to the control group -- suggesting that women who drink a tall glass every day might protect themselves.
Cranberry pills are another story. "All the active ingredients of cranberry juice," says the label on one jar of capsules filled with dried extract, "without the added sugars." The sales pitch is aimed at women who want the drink's benefits but not its calories: 140 per eight-ounce glass.
The trouble with such claims, Avorn says, is that scientists have yet to identify the active ingredient. "And we certainly don't know if it survives processing. So there's no way to know what amount makes its way into the pill." Besides, downing the capsules is a cumbersome business. "What you're doing is basically reconstituting your own cranberry juice pill by pill," says Avorn.
The bottom line:
The label on a leading brand recommends taking four or five capsules three times a day with a full glass of water. That's a lot of pills -- and a lot of money. A week's supply of about 100 capsules costs around $12. You'd spend half as much for a daily 12-ounce glass of juice, which is probably all you'd need.
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