Written by: Christine M Greene, PhD, MBA, CSCS
About the Author: Christine graduated from UCONN with her PhD in Nutritional Science, where she did her thesis on lipid metabolism. She also holds an MBA in Health Care Administration as well as maintaining her certification as a Strength and Conditioning Coach with the NSCA. Dr. Greene is a professor at the University of Hartford and is the Director of Team Sports and Nutrition for CherryPharm.

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Get More Fighting Power in Your Diet
Here’s a little known fact. The millions of processes that go on in your body every day are akin to rusting. You are oxidizing as you sit! Alarming as that is, it is perfectly natural. Breathing, muscle contractions, excretion, absorption, digestion, etc. are all normal physiologic functions that cause the body to produce free radicals. The production of free radicals is a chemical process called oxidation. While oxygen is an important component of this oxidative process, we obviously couldn’t survive without it. Our bodies deal with those changes through a series of reactions that occur thousands of times during our day. We’ll skip the rest of the chemistry lesson and simply say that scientists have found that the production of free radicals produces greedy oxygen molecules that are desperate to find an electron to complement their outer electron orbit. Oxygen will take that electron from any other molecule it can in order to satisfy that greed, even our DNA. That can wreak havoc on the cells in our bodies if we are not properly maintained.Specific age-related problems most likely linked to free radicals include vision loss, heart disease, skin damage, declining mental faculties, the effects of aging, and cancer. Luckily, antioxidants can counter, scavenge, and deactivate these damaging free radicals. Thousands of studies spanning decades of research consistently and repeatedly show that maintaining a high antioxidant defense system lowers a person’s risk for disease, stimulates the immune system, protects brain neurons from damage, and possibly even slows the aging process. Oxidative stress associated with disease occurs when oxidative damage exceeds our antioxidant defenses. Eating or drinking food products that contain antioxidants may slow the progression of these age-related diseases

Antioxidants reportedly slow the disease process by supplying that greedy oxygen with the electron it is seeking. Using antioxidants to prevent or slow the progression of certain diseases is an idea not totally embraced by the medical field – yet. But, it is gaining momentum. “It is clear that up to 70% of strokes and 80% of heart disease can be prevented by changes in diet and lifestyle,” says Balz Frei, Ph.D., director of Oregon State University’s Linus Pauling Institute, as reported in the April 2004 issue of Health. Many health care professionals believe the benefits of antioxidants apply to virtually all the major systems of the body, including the cardiovascular system, immune system and neurons in the brain. Consuming foods high in antioxidant capacity has been touted as a means of slowing the aging process due to the antioxidant’s ability to quench free radicals within the body. But to get the full benefit of natural antioxidants, they need to be consumed in sufficient quantity, each and every day.

Even if your doctor has yet to jump on the antioxidant bandwagon, consuming produce remains part of a healthy diet. Proper nutrition includes eating your ‘colors’, which means selecting whole, fresh fruits and vegetables by the variety of seasonal colors that they offer. Look for foods that range in color from yellow to red to purple. The antioxidants in fruits and vegetables are the reason we see the variety of colors, so select accordingly. Many vegetables are high in antioxidants even though they are green in color. This is because chlorophyll will mask the antioxidants contained, so do not shun green fruits or vegetables! And remember, the more intense the color of the fruit or vegetable, the more antioxidants it has and the better it is for you.

The following table lists a few fruits and vegetables with accompanying ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity – or antioxidant) potential. This laboratory procedure measures the total antioxidant capacity of foods in their various forms and states. ORAC measures how many oxygen radicals a specific food can absorb and deactivate (Ou 2001). The more oxygen radicals a food absorbs, the higher its ORAC score. The higher the ORAC score, the better a food may be in helping our bodies fight diseases like cancer and heart disease. The form of the food is very important here. Fresh juice is different from concentrated, cooked vegetables differ in antioxidant capacity than do fresh. Nutrition experts estimate a person needs to consume 3,000 to 5,000 ORAC units a day to reach a significant antioxidant capacity in the blood associated with health benefits. Using the table below, you will see the antioxidant capacity of your favorite fruits and vegetables.

You can print this table and post it to your fridge for future reference when you make your grocery list. Remember, the higher the ORAC value, the better the food is for you.