Eating Black Raspberries Can Reduce Itchy Symptoms In Skin Allergies, Study Finds

There's nothing quite like biting into a juicy piece of fresh fruit. And on a particularly sweltering summer day, those thirst-quenching fruits can feel especially refreshing.

If you routinely pick up black raspberries2 at your local farmers market, feel free to skip on to the research at hand. But for many of us, the notion of a black raspberry may garner a collective, Huh? 

To put it simply, the fruit is a variant of the original red raspberry, commonly grown in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. As mentioned, they're not quite the same as blackberries—while both may look similar upon first glance, black raspberries differ in texture and taste. First, the little drupelets on black raspberries are covered in tiny hairs (like your typical raspberry), while blackberries appear smooth on the surface. Black raspberries also have a hollow center (again, like its red counterpart), while blackberries usually have a white or green core. In terms of taste, many regard black raspberries as sweeter and less tart than blackberries. 

To determine whether the berry has a place in skin care, researchers put a group of mice on a black raspberry diet, one that's equivalent to a single serving per day for humans. After three weeks, they exposed these mice to common triggers that cause contact hypersensitivity (a condition that causes redness and inflammation in the skin, similar to contact dermatitis). The result? They found the mice's swelling actually went down, compared to the control group.

Of course, this is only the beginning in terms of black raspberries' effects on skin; Oghumu says a deeper dive is needed before we should stock up on black raspberries for skin health this summer. Specifically, he and his team are curious about what properties make those berries so anti-inflammatory.