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Antioxidants and Aging, continued
Which antioxidants should you be consuming?
As many as possible!
Different antioxidants have different roles and interactions.
Antioxidants are not all the same. We need a range of them.
For instance one type of antioxidant may be very effective at inactivating one category of ROS, but ineffective at stopping the effects of a different category of ROS.
Plus, different antioxidants will be found in different places. Fat soluble antioxidants such as vitamin E, will be found in cell membranes, whereas the water soluble antioxidant, vitamin C, is found in blood and in cells.
Additionally, it is thought that generally antioxidants often work together (function in an interdependent manner). This means that having very high levels of one, or a few, antioxidants is not sufficient, since they generally have to act together.
The bottom line: For optimum antioxidant function you need to have good levels of DIFFERENT antioxidants.
Want to know which foods are high in antioxidants?
We are told this food and that food are in antioxidants, but how do they rate against each other?
The USDA has analyzed a large number of foods, and given them ORAC numbers.
ORAC stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, and is a method to measure the antioxidant capacity of foods. This is a measure of the relative antioxidant power of foods.
ORAC numbers were revised and updated at the end of 2007. Most websites still that list the old ORAC values, since they have not updated their sites. The new list is quite comprehensive.
Check out the table and see which foods have high total ORAC values and which ones are high in the major types of antioxidants.
Remember: The variety of foods is important, as well as a food just being high in antioxidants.
