The Cherry Marketing Institute (CMI) is funded by North American tart cherry growers and processors. The organization has taken on Jeff Manning - the manbehind the milk campaign phase, "Got milk?" - to give its cherries healthierrelevance for consumers.
CMI's effort to push forward cherries as "superfruits" were hampered in 2005when the United States Food & Drug Administration issued a warning to thecherry industry over health claims it was making.
In October of that year the federal agency sent warning letters to 29companies it said made unsubstantiated health claims on their websites andproduct labels for products containing cherries.
The most common claims made on the company's websites are that cherriescontain potent anticancer agents, can relieve pain of gout or arthritis, andare beneficial for heart health.
Now CMI is specifically promoting Montmorency tart cherry products for theirhealth benefits, but without attaching these claims to any specificproducts.
CMI cites research behind Montmorency tart cherries that shows they havehigh ORAC (oxygen radical absorption capacity) values.
A number of studies exist that point to the health benefits of cherries.These include the work of Russel Reiter and colleagues at the University ofTexas Health Center, who detected high levels of the anti-oxidant melatonin,understood to function as a free-radical scavenger, in tart cherries.
Members of CMI were in New York to launch the cherry promotional campaignand were not available to speak with FoodNavigator-USA.com.
