The top 10 Super Antioxidant Foods can transform your diet and possibly your life.
Are you tired of dieting?
Don't worry, you can get thin and healthy at the same time.
Super antioxidant foods are nutrient and antioxidant rich and should be placed on every grocery list.
Blueberries are both cancer-fighting and heart-healthy antioxidants. Avocados are full of the same good (HDL) fats that olive oil has, and spinach,... contains mega nutrients.
Tea and dark chocolate, are also super antioxidant foods.
Super Antioxidant Foods are the nutritional equivalent of the fountain of youth and can help prevent diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and many other diseases that attack our society every day.
The fact is, there is every reason to eat them:
Good Nutrition
The antioxidants in blueberries are good for you.
The avocado's mono-unsaturated fats are healthier thanthe saturated fats in butter.
A little bit of dark chocolate contains flavonoids, which are micro-nutrients that help lower blood pressure.
It's called nutrition, a concept dietitians have been trying to sell for years. Now, suddenly, it's popular!
Food companies find the super antioxidant foods concept irresistible for advertising. But that doesn't mean that Dole, the fruit and vegetable giant, was wrong when it called brussels sprouts a superfood in a holiday publicity pitch to food writers.
The sulfurous brassicas do contain lots of vitamin C and some other useful phytonutrients, and they're very good for you.
Tomatoes, especially processed (canned) tomatoes which have been cooked, contain lycopene, a cancer-fighter. Raw tomatoes, of course do not have all the sodium that canned tomatoes contain.
Turkey breast is a very lean source of protein. It is relatively inexpensive per pound and has less saturated fat than chicken.
And drinking tea -- green or black -- delivers a potent dose of antioxidants.
The other thing is, after seeing the super antioxidant foods list below, don't ignore all the other veggies or "berry good friends" such as raspberries, boysenberries and other red fruits like cherries.
They may not have as many anthocyanins (antioxidants) as blueberries, but they have some and are likely to contain other micronutrients whose values simply hasn't yet been studied as much yet.
Super antioxidant foods from your grocery store, farmer's market or grown in your backyard are always be better than trying to get the same nutrient values through using supplements, but supplements can help.
Foods deliver many nutrients, not just the ones science has pinpointed, to-date,... and the nutrients are delivered in combinations that may give them more added power than any one alone,... a concept known as synergy (1 and 1 = 3).
For example, current research shows that consuming vitamin E and lycopene together, like avocados with tomatoes, enhances their antioxidant effects.
Similarly, the oligosaccharides in onions also boost tomatoes' lycopene.
The language of super antioxidant foods can be confusing, because many of the terms for nutrients overlap. Here is a basic glossary:
Antioxidants: An umbrella name for many substances that retard the body's normal process of oxidation, meaning a reaction to oxygen that releases "free radicals" that damage cells and break the body down.
Digestion releases free radicals from food. Antioxidants help to destroy an overabundance of free radicals in our bodies. They slow down oxidation in our cells (which contributes to wrinkles and aging), reduce allergies (because our immune system is healthier), and reduce heart disease, cancer and other effects of aging.
Dozens of antioxidant nutrients have been identified so far, and there are likely many more. Many vitamins have antioxidant effects, including A (which is a carotene), C and E.
Flavonoids: These are the best-known antioxidants,... like tea and dark chocolate among a group called polyphenols.
What is flavonol?It is subgroup in the flavonoids family. Relatives of the flavonoids are, for instance, anthocyanins for which blueberries are famous.
Carotenoids: These are the pigments that protect dark green, yellow, orange and red fruits and vegetables from sun damage and they work as antioxidants in humans, too.
Beta-carotene is the best known. It's also called vitamin A. Other famous carotenoids are lycopene and lutein.
Vitamins: Vitamins are essential to your body's health. Vitamin shortages can be incurred and health problems result when we eat too many fast foods and forget that fatty foods (burgers and fries) and sugar (pop, ketchup and mayonaise) do not a healthy body make.
Phytonutrients: Phytonutrients are plant-derived compounds that are believed to improve your health, but aren't essential to your health. This includes many antioxidants.
Top 10 Super Antioxidant Foods
What's so super about...?
Dark Chocolate: The magic word here is flavonoids, the same kinds of antioxidants that make tea so potent a health brew.
Research shows flavonoids have a role in helping lower blood pressure and in keeping your arteries from clogging, both of which are really good news for your heart. Only dark chocolate does the trick, not milk or white.
Healthy Dark Chocolate
is the best dark chocolate for you due to the fact that it is made with all natural ingredients.
Apples: Different varieties of apples have different phytonutrients, but they all have tons of antioxidants, including flavonoids and other polyphenols, and fiber. Apples, too, are one of the super antioxidant foods.
Avocados: Avocados have the same thing going for them that olive oil does: healthy monounsaturated fatty acids.
These are the "good fats," and they appear to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, and raise HDL (good) cholesterol levels. Antioxidants, magnesium, potassium, folate and fiber also help to increase good cholesterol levels.
Research shows that avocados help the body absorb more nutrients from other foods, (the tomato in the same salad, for instance).
Beans: Beans haven't gotten the same media buzz as blueberries, but some beans have even more health-promoting antioxidants. They also have as much cholesterol-lowering fiber as oats, and lots of lean protein.
Both dried beans and green beans are rich in B vitamins and potassium, (good for your heart).
Blueberries: Frozen do the trick as well as fresh, and they're easier to find in winter. For such tiny fruits, they deliver a huge wallop of antioxidants of many kinds, including anthocyanins and other polyphenols, and carotenoids.
They also have fiber, folic acid and vitamins C and E. And they taste good with very few calories. Just sprinkle a few on your cereal and you have started your day off with super antioxidant foods.
Kiwis: Vitamin C, vitamin C, vitamin C,...kiwis are loaded in this antioxidant, which also makes oranges a superfood. Kiwis rival bananas in potassium, pound for pound. And flavonoid antioxidants abound in the skin, which is edible but best if you rub the fuzzy skin off first.
Oats: At the top of the list of grains in the fiber world, oats delivers not only antioxidants, but protein, potassium, magnesium and other minerals, and phytonutrients.
Oat help to lower cholesterol. Due to their high fiber content it is believed that they help stabilize blood sugar. Oats are quick and easy to make in the morning and a little goes a long way, making a bowl of oatmeal a very inexpensive meal.
This combination of nutrients appears to have more healthy effects than if each nutrient were consumed separately, which seems to be true of all whole grains. Oatmeal is fast and easy to make in the morning and inexpensive, too.
Spinach: What doesn't spinach have? It's loaded with lutein (for eyes) and many other carotenoids, which are healthful antioxidants; plus other antioxidants like coenzyme Q, in serious doses; plus several B vitamins plus C and E; plus iron and other minerals; plus betaine, a vitamin-like nutrient research suggests is good for your heart.
And with almost no calories, you can eat as much as you want. Spinach's counterparts, kale, chard and other dark leafy greens make great salads.
Walnuts: All nuts are revered for their healthy fats and micronutrients.
Don't eat but a small handful at a time, though, because they are high in fat and high in calories. Walnuts' are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which helps to prevent heart disease. Plant sterols lower cholesterol, and contain lots of antioxidants.
Yogurt: The health benefits of yogurt have been known for centuries. The live cultures, called probiotics contain beneficial bacteria for intestinal health.
These bacteria turn milk into yogurt (but most commercial yogurts are heated to kill the cultures, so be sure to read the label).
In your intestines, these fight off bad bacteria, aid your digestion, assist in metabolizing food and help keep your system balanced. Yogurt also is a good source of calcium and protein. Natural (sugar-free) yogurt also replenishes the friendly bacteria in the intestines after you have taken antibiotics.
So, make sure you get your antioxidants included in your everyday diet with these super antioxidant foods.
Jack LaLanne: Jack LaLanne, long time exercise and health food proponent, was the first person to have a television exercise program. The show went on the air in 1951 and ended 34 years later, in 1985. Many people grew up watching him on TV in the 1960s.
By his own description, he was frail and always sickly as a child, and addicted to sugar and junk food. His sugar addiction also made him prone to violent acts, such as setting his parents' house on fire and chasing his brother with an axe.
At one point in his life, he was so weak, his doctor actually recommended that he be removed from school one year to stay home and rest because he did not have the energy to perform his school work.
In desperation, he and his mother attended a lecture by Paul C. Bragg, a nutritionist. After describing to Bragg the foods that he liked to eat, Bragg told LaLanne that he was a human garbage can.
This was the turning point in his life.
Once he gave up processed sugar, added exercise, and whole, healthy foods to his diet, not only did he swim the Golden Gate Channel to Alcatraz while pulling a 2500 pound cabin cruiser in his teeth at the age of 70, (as well as many other amazing feats of strength during his life), he wanted to share his health and good fortune with others.
The remainder of his life was spent trying to help people get fit and healthy by drinking fruit and vegetable juices and adding a daily exercise regimen.
He lived to the age of 96. Hats off and kudos to you, Jack! You were an inspiration to 3 generations of people, worldwide.
Jack LaLanne did not promote super antioxidant foods, per se. He just knew that when he committed to changing his diet and included lots of fresh, raw, fruits and vegetables, his life turned around for the better. That knowledge was his legacy to us.
Today, Tom Venuto, author of the E-Book, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, has helped several hundred thousand people to embrace that same healthy, high energy, slimmer waistline lifestyle that Jack LaLanne began teaching us from his own experience 60 years ago.
If you, too, are searching for super antioxidant foods because you have low energy, are often ill, have joint or back pain and/or know that you need a healthy weight loss regimen, listen to what Tom Venuto says about how you can learn to
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