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What Is The ORAC Antioxidant Scale?

By Max Murphy

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 19Mar2010
Word count: 416
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The Orac antioxidant scale is a very simple formula scientists use to measure the "power" of the healing power in the specific antioxidant you're testing.

In more specific terms - the ORAC is a method of measuring antioxidant capacities in biological samples.

But nobody likes science jargon, so I'll keep this nice and simple for you.

First of all, ORAC stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbence Capacity. What it really means is that it's the ability to "absorb" free radicals in your body. After all, that's what antioxidants do - they kill the free radicals in your body that cause horrible things such as disease, illness, pain, wrinkles, old again and most every other "bad" thing that can happen to you.

What Is A Good ORAC Antioxidant Number?

When thinking about eating a particular type of food such as fruits or vegetables (I'll explain which ones have great ORAC antioxidant scores next) - I have found something interesting occurs.

In most cases, the darker the food - the higher the ORAC score, the lighter in color the food - the lower the ORAC score.

For example, wild blueberries have a much higher score than something like a potato or light colored apple. Of course there are exceptions to this, but in most cases this seems to stand true.

The problem is... some people get obsessed over numbers and don't focus on simply eating healthy foods. In my opinion, it's not exactly the number that counts, but that you simply focus on eating more fruits and vegetables - and if you're a little more serious about it (good for you) - simply look for fruits and vegetables that are darker in color.

With that said...here are a list of foods with very high ORAC antioxidant scores and which I would fully recommend including in your diet.

On the left will be the food, the middle is the serving size, and the right is the ORAC antioxidant number.

Small red beans - ½ cup - 13,727

Wild Blueberries - 1 cup - 13,427

Cranberries - 1 cup - 8,983

Artichoke Hearts - 1 cup - 7,904

Blackberry - 1 cup - 7,701

Prune - ½ cup - 7,291

There is a lot of information out there about the various ORAC scores for different food groups but as I already mentioned, simply focus on eating darker fruits and vegetables and you can't go wrong!

Getting more antioxidants into your body may be the most critical factor in having good health, so start today by learning which antioxidants are best to consume!

If you're interested in antioxidants, I highly suggest discovering what the definition of glutathione is because it's the single most important antioxidant in your body. In fact, without glutathione - your body literally can't function!

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