Air date: May 3, 2009

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Did you Know? is presented by Wishard Health Services, becoming Eskenazi Health in 2014.

It does sound strange, but it's true: eating blueberries could help you get rid of belly fat.

A new study claims that they may be good for us, too. Researchers at the University of Michigan found that rats on a blueberry-rich diet lost abdominal fat -- the kind of fat associated with heart disease and diabetes.

As an added bonus, eating lots of blueberries also appeared to lower the rats' cholesterol and improved their glucose control.

As for why blueberries may have had these affects, the researchers think it may have something to do with how the berries change the way the body stores and breaks down glucose, or sugar.

Now of course, rats don’t care about cholesterol, but we do. And as with all animals studies, just because something works in rats doesn’t mean it will necessarily have the same affect in people.

That’s the next step in the research.

And now you know.

Additional Resources:

• Read more about the University of Michigan blueberry research at WebMD.

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