Super Foods

The Power of Super Foods

Almost every day we see articles in the popular press about Super Foods: fruits and vegetables with seemingly miraculous benefits for the people who eat them. Is there any truth to these stories? How can you take advantage of the Super Foods discoveries and glean some of the health benefits for yourself?

To answer these questions we need to understand a few things, such as: the battle between free radicals and antioxidants. What the term ORAC means. And the benefits we get from eating fresh fruits and vegetables every day.

Antioxidants vs. free radicals
Free radicals form as pollution inside your body; these damaging molecules are by-products of metabolism. Metabolism is the way your body converts the three food groups – carbohydrates, protein and fats – into energy. The more energy you produce from food, the more free radical pollution you generate. Free radicals have been linked to a wide array of health problems, ranging from heart disease and cancer to arthritis and inflammation.

Luckily, foods also contain antioxidants. Antioxidants donate molecules to balance, neutralize and quench free radicals. They are very generous that way! They will keep donating until they are completely spent.

The efficiency built into Super Foods is amazing: the carbohydrates, protein and fats create energy and the antioxidants in the same foods neutralize the waste. A healthy food will quench as many free radicals as it makes. A really good food will quench more free radicals than you make metabolizing the food. For this reason, these nutrient sources are called Super Foods. You will feel better today and healthier tomorrow if you eat these foods.

We measure the antioxidant capacity in foods on a scale called ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity). The higher the number, the more free radicals the foods will quench.

Whole foods – the good stuff!
All foods contain antioxidants, even "junk" foods. But the problem is that junk foods don't contain enough antioxidants to neutralize all the free radical waste they create from the metabolism process. In other words, junk foods contain more pollution than their built-in ORAC capacity can neutralize. So, your body is left imbalanced and at greater risk for health problems.

In contrast to junk foods, whole foods usually contain enough antioxidants to support waste cleanup from metabolism. And certain whole foods go even further – they are filled with antioxidant concentrations that are associated with longevity and vitality. For instance, blueberries have been associated with a sharp mind and clear vision for thousands of years. The berry has numerous concentrated antioxidants that have an affinity for your eyes, brain and heart. You can benefit from these antioxidants by eating fresh blueberries as well as whole food concentrates containing blueberries.

Other berries also contain dense antioxidant concentrations. That's why eating a variety of berries is a superb way of getting the high ORAC antioxidants you need. Whole berry concentrates, such as blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and raspberries provide both the nutrients and antioxidants needed for healthy metabolism. Rare fruits, such as wolfberry (goji), acai drupes, and mangosteen also provide strong boosts of antioxidant power – so much so, that many have labeled them as Super Fruits.

What we need
We were designed to eat whole, ripe foods at their peak of freshness to help our bodies have sufficient antioxidants. So, approximately how many ORAC units do we need each day?

• Children – 3,000 ORAC units daily (about 5 servings of fruit and vegetables)
• Women – 4,200 ORAC units daily (about 7 servings of fruit and vegetables)
• Men – 5,400 ORAC units daily (about 9 servings of fruit and vegetables)

Considering our polluted environment, deficient diet and relentless stress I would suggest we consume even larger amounts of ORAC units every day.

More suggestions: Eat whole foods and make sure you include every color in the rainbow in your diet because different antioxidants come with different colors. Also, look for whole food supplements to augment your diet such as NutraFruits or Adaptogen 10 Plus. Whole foods and whole food supplements will help improve your metabolism, reduce toxicity, increase vitality and improve your health!

 

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