Antioxidant Power Foods

Oxygen Radical Absorbency Capacity (ORAC) is one method of measuring the antioxidant capacities of different foods. It was developed at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland around the turn of the century, and was picked up by the mainstream press in 2004.

It’s not surprising that prunes, raisins, blueberries, kale, spinach, spices and cocoa are among the highest scoring ORAC foods. Foods with moderately high ORAC values include wild blueberries, pomegranates and black raspberries. These are power foods.

Discover the power of antioxidants; vitamins A,C,E and the element selenium are free radical scavengers that sweep up the cellular debris left by attacks on the immune cells dispatched by the body’s natural defense system.

Antioxidant foods are not folk remedies! They are scientifically proven to help the body battle disease. Scientists today can prove that eating antioxidant-rich foods, such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains, helps human bodies fight disease.

Here are the highest-scoring ORAC foods that everyone should ingest:

Vitamin A

Eat a variety of dark orange, red, yellow and green vegetables and fruits such as broccoli, kale, spinach, sweet potatoes, carrots, red and yellow peppers, apricots, cantaloupe and mangos.

Vitamin C

Make the most of citrus fruits and their juices, berries, dark green vegetables (spinach, asparagus, green peppers, Brussel sprouts, broccoli, watercress, other greens), red and yellow peppers, tomatoes and tomato juice, pineapple, cantaloupe, mangoes, papaya and guava.

Vitamin E

Your diet should include vegetable oils such as olive, soybean, corn, cottonseed and safflower oil, nuts and nut butters, acorns, whole grains, wheat, wheat germ, brown rice, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, legumes (beans, lentils, split peas) and dark leafy green vegetables.

Selenium

Enjoy Brazil nuts, brewer’s yeast, chicken, eggs, dairy products, garlic, molasses, onions, salmon, seafood, tuna, wheat germ, whole grains.

For more information on how these antioxidants help your body, please read the article I wrote entitled “How Antioxidants Help Cure the Common Cold” and to be sure you know why antioxidants are so important, check out my article on free radicals.