What are Super Antioxidants?
Super Antioxidants have the highest
ORAC Value
(antioxidant power). Antioxidants are substances such as vitamins, minerals, carotenoids, and polyphenols that help protect cells in your body.
They are nature’s way of fighting off potentially dangerous molecules in the bloodstream of your body. Such molecules come in the form of synthetic chemicals such as pesticides, plastics, and chlorine byproducts and are called
free radicals
.
An ample supply of antioxidants to stabilize and eliminate free radicals is exactly what we need everyday in our diet to keep a healthy immune system.
Some of us are starving our bodies everyday from the antioxidants we need to protect us and that is why we are seeing more and more diseases such as high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer.
The majority of people today are too busy to slow down long enough to eat their fruits and veggies and/or the nutritional meals that their bodies need.
Your health is a serious matter. It's important to learn about fruits and vegetables and stock up every week when they are in season. But, if you're a procrastinator, it's important for you to learn how to mentally get healthy, first.
If procrastination is a problem,... if you just can't get yourself motivated to do what you need to do,... if your willpower and persistence always seems to fizzle out, or you make a list and never get it all done,...then super antioxidants will help you become physically healthy.
But, to fully take advantage of the power of your mind over your body, and ultimately change your thinking, find inner peace, and remove stresses in your life, it is also necessary to Learn how to take back full control of your life!
How Do Antioxidants Work?
ORAC stands for the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity of different foods. What that means is that the more oxygen you can get into all the cells of your body, the healthier you can keep those cells from being damaged by free radical molecules.
Free radicals are a by-product of normal metabolism and also come from smoking, pollution, poisons, fried foods. Free radical cell damage is associated with an increased risk of many chronic diseases.
The free-radical theory of aging states that by slowing down the oxidative processes and neutralizing free radical damage which can contribute to age-related degeneration and disease, we can remain healthier.
Antioxidants such as vitamin C, carotenes, vitamin E and polyphenols reduce the damage caused by free radicals.
It is believed that foods higher on the ORAC scale will more effectively neutralize these free radicals.
Check the ORAC values of different antioxidants, below.
Top 11 Super Antioxidants?
- 1. Unprocessed Cocoa Powder is the Number One Super Antioxidant Food with a whopping 26,000 ORAC Value per 100 grams (3.5 ounces). Unprocessed cocoa is the highest rated antioxidant food source-much greater than red wine or green tea.
- 2.
Acai Berries
have an impressive 18,500 ORAC Value. Acai Berries are Nature's Super Antioxidants that looks like a purple grape and is found in the Amazon Rainforest on acai palm trees.
They were recently featured on MSNBC News and on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where they were endorsed by Oprah.
- 3.
Dark Chocolate
(processed) has 13,120 ORAC Value. Unprocessed dark chocolate has many benefits to include lowering blood pressure, decreasing complications with diabetes, increasing the health of pregnant women, increasing energy, reversing the aging process, not to mention it tastes great!
The difference between processed and unprocessed cocoa is processed cocoa is heated (most chocolate you buy in store) with high temperatures that destroys most of the antioxidants in the dark chocolate.
- 4. Prunes have a 5,770 ORAC value. I'll bet you didn't think that prunes would be one of the Super Antioxidants. Prunes are very good for you.
Prunes are a type of plum grown specifically for drying. Prune juice is more fiber-rich than plum juice, and is often marketed as a way to increase regularity.
- 5. Raisins has 2,830 ORAC Value. Raisins are healthy and nutritious fruit snacks that can be enjoyed naturally or cooked as part of your favorite recipe. A small box of raisins is a great pick-me-up in the early afternoon and a small box of raisins is a healthy addition to kid's lunches.
- 6.
Blueberries
have a 2,400 ORAC Value. Blueberries are flowering plants bell-shaped with white, pale pink or red, sometimes tinged greenish flowers considered to be Nature's Antioxidant SuperFruit.
- 7. Blackberries has 2,036 ORAC Value. Wild Blackberries are like the ones you buy, but better. You can find them wherever you live. The fruit ripens from mid-summer to early fall and goes from red to black, sweet to taste and is wonderful.
- 8. Strawberries has 1,540 ORAC Value. Strawberries and blueberries have been linked to protection from Alzheimer's.
Researchers are finding out more and more everyday about how antioxidants in our fruits and vegetables can protect us from many of the diseases that are attacking our society today.
- 9. Raw Spinach has 1,260 ORAC Value. Raw spinach is naturally rich in lutein (antioxidant). Lutein is found in hundreds of nutritional supplements, from multivitamins to eye care formulas to products containing lutein as the sole ingredient.
- 10.Broccoli Florets has 890 ORAC Value. Broccoli is a Super Food and research suggests that it is especially good for the stomach. A compound found in broccoli and broccoli sprouts appears to be more effective than modern antibiotics against the bacteria which causes peptic ulcers.
Moreover, tests in mice show that the compound offers tremendous protection against stomach cancer - the second most common form of cancer in the world. A different study showed that consumption of broccoli was strongly associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease death in postmenopausal women.
- 11.Red Grapes have 739 ORAC Value. It's long been known that drinking red grape juice or wine has the potential to help fight off breast cancer.
Researchers say the antioxidants (polyphenols) in the red grapes may lead to the destruction of mutated or abnormal cells, preventing their establishment and the development of cancer.
