Science Says Cranberry Juice Actually Does Nothing for UTIs

There can't be many things in this world more irritating than a urinary tract infection—especially if it rears its ugly head when you're trying to watch Kanye on the main stage at Glasto or embark on a romantic backpacking trip with your boyfriend. Luckily, you can guard yourself against the devil's pee by chugging cranberry juice.

Well, maybe not. According to new research from Yale School of Medicine, cranberries, cranberry juice, and all associated cranberry products don't do shit for UTIs.

Published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study begins by noting that cranberry juice has long been recommended for those who suffer regularly from UTIs. Its acidity is thought to change the pH balance of the bladder to stop infections from developing.

Study lead author Manisha Juthani-Mehta told CNN: "One of the first studies that showed that cranberry juice was effective in older women living in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities was published in 1994."

The researchers set out to test the UTI-curing cranberry theory with the help of female nursing home residents, a group of people especially susceptible to the infection. The researchers randomly assigned 147 of the women to take either two cranberry capsules daily (each containing 36 milligrams of the active cranberry ingredient proanthocyanidin), or a placebo.

After a year, researchers concluded that there was no difference in the presence of bacteriuria plus pyuria—the bacteria in urine that shows the presence of a UTI—between the group who took the cranberry tablets and those that didn't. There was also no difference in the episodes of UTIs between the two groups.

Soz, Ocean Spray.

It's not the first time the infection-clearing properties of cranberry juice have been called into question. In 2012, a review from the University of Sterling in the UK looked at 24 studies on cranberries with a total of 4,473 participants and found that the juice could not "be recommended for the prevention of UTIs."

Also speaking to CNN following the new Yale study, David Soper of the Medical University of South Carolina said: "The realistic amount of cranberry juice that can be ingested on a regular basis makes it impractical to recommend, and in addition, well-designed studies don't show a positive preventive effect."

Lindsay E. Nicolle from the University of Manitoba, however, put it a little more bluntly. Writing in response to the study, she said: "It is time to move on from cranberries."

That may be so, but you're going to have to prise the cranberry and white chocolate cookies out of our cold dead hands.