Eat a Cranberry Day

What the day is

Eat a Cranberry Day is observed on November 23, placed a few days ahead of Thanksgiving, when most of the American crop is about to be eaten in a single sitting.

Origin and background

The cranberry is one of a very small number of commercially significant fruits native to North America, alongside the blueberry and the Concord grape. Indigenous peoples of the northeast used the berries in preserved foods and as a dye long before European cultivation began in the early nineteenth century.

Two features of the fruit determine how it is grown and sorted. Each berry contains small internal air pockets, so it floats. That is why the familiar harvest image is a flooded bog with a red surface: growers flood the beds, knock the fruit loose and corral the floating berries. Only fruit destined for the fresh market is dry-harvested, which costs more and is why loose cranberries are a seasonal item.

Those air pockets also make a sound berry bounce. A grower named John Webb worked out in the nineteenth century that good fruit bounced down a set of steps while soft fruit did not, and separators built on that principle are still in use.

The industry's worst moment came in 1959, when federal officials announced weeks before Thanksgiving that part of the crop carried residue of a weedkiller linked to cancer in animal studies. Sales collapsed through the holiday, and the episode is still taught as a case study in how to communicate a food scare badly.

On health claims, be careful. Cranberries contain proanthocyanidins, which appear to interfere with bacteria adhering to the urinary tract, but trial results on preventing infections have been inconsistent and the effect, where found, is modest. Sweetened juice cocktail carries a great deal of sugar for whatever benefit survives.

How to take part

• Eat one raw. That is the point of the day, and it is far more sour than people expect.
• Make sauce from whole fresh berries. It takes ten minutes and needs only sugar and water.
• Buy extra and freeze them. They keep for months and the fresh ones vanish in December.
• Read the juice label and check what share is actually cranberry.
• Try them dried in something savory, where the acidity does more work than in baking.