Antioxidant Foods

Archive for December, 2009

It has been proven beyond question that antioxidant fruits are good for your health and well- being. Nevertheless all antioxidant fruits don’t provide a similar degree of health benefits. It may be declared some antioxidant fruits are more powerful than others. They’ve got a higher percentage of antioxidants and offer more antioxidant health benefits than some of the other fruits.

Some fruits may give you nutrients together with antioxidant phytonutrients, while different fruit may offer only vitamins and/or minerals. The body was designed to get its energy needs using oxygen along with nutrients as fuel. Oxygen, does provide a great many benefits and has loads of positive effects but also has a damaging side. When oxygen is processed in the body, by a process known as oxidation, there is a simultaneous production of oxygen by products known as free radicals. The highly reactive free radicals can cause damage to the cells. The antioxidants that are present in the body work by neutralizing these free radicals. In this process the free radicals are prevented from causing any harm.

With much being said recently about antioxidants and the health benefits they provide folks are becoming increasingly receptive to these life changing nutrients. By now we all know that citrus fruits are abundant with Vitamin C and apples have a high beta- carotene content. A day-to-day diet that centers on a higher utilization of antioxidants helps give our bodies a stronger immune mechanism in its fight against free radicals and consequently oxidative stress, which is the damage that free radicals cause. Scientists have linked the process of oxidative stress to the creation of degenerative and chronic diseases including cancer and heart disease.

Antioxidant rich grains, vegetables,fruits, nuts and seeds in your diet provide you with more benefits than you  would get if you took only antioxidant supplements. Scientists suspect that this could be due to the fact that the consumption of different antioxidant fruits and other foods creates a combination of phytonutrients that are lesser known but just as potent.
These antioxidant nutrient combination’s have an effect that is far greater than that provided by any individual antioxidant supplement or any single nutrient.

In one of the recent Journal of Nutrition issues, the analysis from the antioxidant content of numerous antioxidant fruits was published. In keeping with the charts, strawberries, sour cherries, blue berries, crowberries, black currants, raspberries and black berries had the highest antioxidant content of all fruit within the berry family. Other important antioxidant fruits include grapefruit, plum, pomegranates, kiwi, lemon, orange, grape, dates, pineapple and Clementine.