Blueberries healthy for rats. Yeah!

The University of Michigan's Cardioprotection Research Laboratory released a new study showing that rats fed a blueberry-rich diet experienced lower cholesterol, decreased belly fat and improved glucose control and insulin sensitivity.

In the study, presented at Experimental Biology 2009, researchers fed rats bred to become obese either a high-fat or low-fat diet enriched with whole blueberry powder or carbohydrates as 2% of their total diet.

It would have been easy to write this off because if you fed an animal healthy food, it gets healthier, but they didn't do that. They just gave the rodents a little magic powder and ta-da!

My only issue here is the headline WebMD used: "Blueberries May Banish Belly Fat," which doesn't represent the study very well and will drive thousands of overweight people to stuff their mugs with blueberries. It's better than Butterfingers, I suppose, but still, if it's not part of a smart calorie deficit, it's not going to make much difference around the waist.