Blueberries as a First Food: A Conversation With Minghua Tang, Ph.D.

The Business of Blueberries

In this episode of “The Business of Blueberries,” Kasey Cronquist, president of the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council (USHBC) and the North American Blueberry Council (NABC), is joined by Minghua Tang, Ph.D., and Leslie Wada, Ph.D. Tang is an associate professor and the Lillian Fountain Smith Endowed Chair in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Colorado State University. Wada is the USHBC’s sr. director of nutrition and health research. Tang and Wada share some exciting results found in a study regarding complementary feeding of blueberries to infants.

“ We saw these beneficial effects of the blueberry powder compared to the placebo in terms of the immunity, and we also saw that in terms of the gut microbiome. … So after eating the blueberry for seven months and after eating the placebo for seven months with the same background diet, if you take blueberry on top of what you eat, you have less of these pathogens in your gut, and that's what we saw.” — Minghua Tang, Ph.D.

Topics covered include:

• Hear about a recent study that identified significant benefits for infants after being fed blueberries.
• Discover the benefits of introducing blueberries in the complementary feeding phase of infants, and the lifelong impacts it can have on health.

Crop Report

The Blueberry Crop Report is an update on crop conditions and markets throughout important blueberry growing areas. Today you’ll hear from Caylan Huddleston in Oregon, Mario Ramirez in Mexico and Luis Vegas in Peru. This was recorded on September 11, 2025.