Food - Drink
This Country Produces More Cranberries Than Any Other In The World
By WENDY LEIGH
Fresh cranberries are quite different from other berries. Not only is their flavor extremely tart, their texture unusually crisp and crunchy, and their nutritional profile full of vitamin C, fiber, and phytonutrients, but these fruits are not grown in many places — luckily, a certain country picks up the slack by growing the most cranberries.
Cranberries require a bog- or marsh-like ecosystem that contains natural clay, sand, peat, gravel, and rocks; the fruit's native places of growing were actually created by glaciers. Cranberries can only grow in so many environments and countries, and it’s Northern America that leads the reigns, especially the United States.
Cranberry farming flourishes in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, and Oregon, and American bogs provide about half of the world’s cranberry production. First cultivated by Indigenous communities as poultices to extract poison, as well as colorful dyes, today cranberries are a healthy and delicious ingredient or snack.