What are Antioxidants?

Antioxidants are substances or nutrients that are found in certain foods, some more than others, and which can prevent or slow the oxidative damage to our body. When our body uses oxygen, there is a process that takes place, known as the oxidation process. This process, after a while, can end up doing damage to the body, but antioxidants help to slow this process off and make us healthier as a result.

Antioxidants work to kill off the free radicals and hence prevent and repair damage done by them. There are many different health conditions that antioxidants can help to prevent, including heart disease, macular degeneration, diabetes, cancer, and liver disease.

Antioxidant Levels in Food

If you really want to maximize your health and get yourself as healthy as possible, you are going to want to learn about antioxidant levels in foods and which foods contain the most antioxidants. Antioxidant levels in food are very important, as there are certain foods that are chalk full of these things.

Carrots, squash, broccoli, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, kale, cabbage, collards, spinach, apricots, and all bright colored fruits and vegetables are high in antioxidants. Flax seed, oatmeal, barley, rye, grapefruit, watermelon, and tea are all high in antioxidants as well.

Of all the antioxidant levels in food, the highest are found in the cocoa bean. Antioxidant levels in food refer more to nothing more than chocolate, well dark chocolate. No other type of chocolate contains antioxidants as dark chocolate does. Until now it was thought that tea, in particular green tea, contained the most antioxidants, but now we know that it is dark chocolate.

Research also shows that the cocoa butter in the chocolate helps by coating the teeth and thereby helping to protect them by preventing plaque from forming. The sugar in the chocolate can contribute to cavities if you eat too much of course, and you can also gain weight if you do not eat dark chocolate in moderation. As long as you eat all of these foods in moderation and make sure that you include some from all the different food groups, you will be giving yourself the nutrition you need to strive.

Focus On The Organic Health Food Benefit

Although there are many different benefits that we get from the consumption of organic food, the most basic organic health food benefit that we get is pure and clean fruits, vegetables and other foods. This organic health food benefit is actually a very important matter if you look at it in the way that food is the fuel of the populace. Without food, we can not function well and we can not even think properly. The lack of food affects us physically and mentally.

Having pure and clean food to eat via organic farming is one great organic health food benefit which we should take more notice of. This benefit will help us have better body systems and better mental capacity.

One primary organic health food benefit after having pure and clean food is the impact that organic farming has had on the environment. In places where organic farming is promoted, their soil is not as stressed as in other countries and places. This means that the soil will need less organic fertilizer or compost to help the plants grow healthy and strong although these are necessary to help them along, too. Some methods used by commercialized farmers often destroy the value of the sol and render it useless for years.

Another organic health food benefit is the fact that we get more delicious and better tasting fruits, vegetables and meats from organic farmers. These organic food products are usually better tasting because little is altered in their genes to male them bigger yet odd tasting. Other organic health food benefits that people may find interesting are the fact that there are no chemicals or harmful substances present in the organic foods sold to the consumers.

Understanding organic health food benefits is essential to motivate the people and governments of the world to promote organic food products for healthier lives. The benefits stated above are all results of studies from experts in the field.

The reason that fruit and vegetables are so important is that they provide the body with antioxidants that can fight free radicals that could otherwise increase your risk of developing certain diseases. Recently many people have claimed that antioxidant tablets are a good way to include antioxidants in your diet. So, do they work?

Clinical Studies

The idea of using antioxidant tablets is a new one and studies are being conducted to test the effectiveness of antioxidant tablets in combating cancer, heart disease, strokes, and high blood pressure. At the moment there is not enough evidence to suggest that antioxidant are completely effective at preventing any of these diseases.

This is based largely on a study that was published showing that two test groups, one taking antioxidant tablets and another taking placebos, showed no difference in terms of lowered risk of the diseases antioxidants are supposed to prevent.

From this study it would appear that antioxidant tablets did not lower the risk of disease as people who took the tablets had just as much chance of developing the same diseases as the group of people on placebos. This doesn’t seem like encouraging news but not all hope is lost.

Before you flush your antioxidant tablets down the toilet stop to consider the findings. It is only one study that has been published. Other studies are still ongoing and could soon prove that there are significant benefits to taking these supplements.

On the other hand there is no harm in taking supplements. You could well be benefiting from the supplements. If you believe that taking supplements are important then keep taking them and make sure that the rest of your diet also includes healthy amounts of antioxidants. Fruits and vegetables are your best source of antioxidants, as well as green, black, and certain herbal teas.

An antioxidant a day could truly keep the doctor away. The evidence to suggest that antioxidants are key to preventing cancer, strokes, heart diseases, lowering blood pressure, and other degenerative and age related diseases is very strong. People who want to have a good quality of life in their later years would do well to have plenty of antioxidants in their day to day diet.

It seems almost as if there is a new fad diet every week. Many of these contain elements of truth, but on the whole they contain much more good marketing than good science.

There is the 3-day diet, which touts eating little more than fruits for three days, followed by vegetables or meat or grains the other days. There are lots of variations.

While it’s certainly true that eating fruit regularly is a key element to good health - most contain needed carbohydrates, vitamins and fiber - eating almost exclusively fruit for three days leads to imbalance - in carbohydrates, fiber and additional otherwise healthy components. To an extent the body will equalize and store what it needs for later, but there are limits.

Similarly, the ‘low carb, high protein’ diets, such as Atkins, recommend cutting way down on carbohydrates and eating substantial amounts of food high in protein. Here again protein is vital to proper nutrition, but so are carbohydrates. Putting too much emphasis on the first over the second leads to rapid, temporary weight loss, but at a high cost.

Carbohydrates are essential for supplying energy for all biochemical processes. Though the body, when needed, will use other sources, such as fat and protein. Too great an emphasis on protein reduces the ability of the body to store and regulate the appropriate amount of water, whereas carbohydrates help that.

There are very attractive sounding ‘chocolate diets’. Nearly everyone loves chocolate and, contrary to some reports of a few years ago, it is healthy - in moderation. Chocolate contains anti-oxidants and other compounds that are helpful. But, as with anything, too much of a good thing is just that - too much. Also, since many will seek chocolate in forms that come with high fat, high sugar amounts it’s possible to get some not-so-helpful elements along with the good.

There are ultra-low fat diets. Once again, the problem isn’t with reduced fat, but going to extremes. A certain amount of fat in the diet is a healthy thing.

Any diet which makes promises of radical, rapid or quick weight loss - or any other extreme claim - is almost guaranteed to be more harmful than helpful. The human body has evolved over millions of years and decades of good nutritional research still confirms the common sense truth: balance is good, moderation is healthy.

Eat moderate portions at regular intervals of fruits and vegetables (for vitamins, carbohydrates and fiber), grains (for carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and fiber), protein (for amino acids) and dairy products (for calcium, unless you’re lactose intolerant). For the average person, between 2000-2500 calories per day is appropriate. Less for women, on average, and for those seeking rapid weight loss.

A balanced diet, coupled with age-appropriate, moderate and regular exercise, will lead to a healthy percentage of body fat, good muscle tone and a well-tuned system. You’ll find you feel better and look good.

You may have read this one: eating ice cream actually causes weight loss. The so-called theory is that since ice cream is cold, and it takes energy (measured in calories) to warm it up, your body is consuming energy while eating.

Your body does certainly require energy to warm up ice cream, and even to digest it. Any action the body takes requires energy, that’s basic physics applied to physiology. But the devil is in the details. Eating ice cream, usually high in fat and sugar, takes in far more calories than are used to warm and digest it. Sorry, you still need to go easy on the dessert.

Sometimes ice water is substituted in the myth. True it has no calories, so you’re much better off. But the energy needed to warm it to body temperature is negligible in terms of the weight loss effect. However, sometimes you feel hungry when in fact the body is just slightly dehydrated. Drinking water can cause you to feel less hungry, and it’s much lower in calories than regular soda or even orange juice.

Or, you might have heard this one: adding a pound of muscle makes the body burn an extra 50 calories. Not only not true, but meaningless. ‘Burns 50 calories’ over how long? Just sitting consumes about 70 calories per hour. The body is consuming energy to maintain internal temperature, repair cells, pump blood, etc.

A pound of new muscle will burn at most a dozen calories per hour. Still, adding muscle is a good idea, since to do so requires high effort - either through running, weight training or other vigorous exercise. Mild exercise, such as walking, is good but tones more than builds muscle. The average man will burn about 350 calories in an hour long workout.

Vigorous exercise also raises the metabolic rate for a day, burning about 250 calories more than if one hadn’t exercised. A brisk walk will do so also, but at a much lower level. It’s still a good idea to workout every other day and walk on the non-workout days. It keeps the muscles toned, stretched and helps prevent the lactic acid buildup that causes sore muscles.

The reality is that if you take in more calories than your body uses the remaining energy is stored, generally in the form of chemical bonds in fatty tissues. When the body requires more energy that you’ve supplied, it will turn to those fat stores in order to get some needed energy. That leads to lower fat in the body and weight loss. That reality is best achieved by the old-fashioned combination of proper diet and adequate regular exercise.

It must have felt unnatural at first, to eat animal flesh. After all, we’re not so far removed from animals ourselves. Perhaps it even felt cannibalistic. There might not have been that much intellectual distinction between humans and other animals. When humans were pure vegetarians, they were living in harmony with the earth and with the other creatures co-habiting the planet with them. Their closest animal relatives, apes, were vegetarians. Eating the products of the earth, like plants, grains and fruits that they could gather and eat would have seemed the natural order of things.

But necessity is the mother of invention. Prehistoric men who lived in frozen geographies, or who lived in an area that became devastated by fire, would have eaten anything to survive. Just like the soccer players whose plane crashed in the mountains of Chile, and were forced to eat the flesh of other players who died in the crash, earliest man at some point had to make the choice for survival, and that could have consuming meat for the first time and changing human history – and health – forever.

We can imagine that men first ate meat that had been charred or cooked by virtue of being caught in a natural forest fire. They might have subsequently eaten raw meat, if necessary, but we can also imagine that our earliest digestive systems rebelled against eating raw meat.

Imagine having eaten raw foods and vegetables for eons, and all of a sudden, incorporating meat products into your system. You may have heard friends who were vegetarians tell stories of trying to eat meat and becoming violently ill afterwards.

Biologists will tell you we’re really not designed to eat meat, but we adapted to it. However, in the timeline of human history, eating meat is a relatively recent evolutionary development.

Eating fruit and vegetables everyday is one way to get a good dose of antioxidants; it is also the traditional way that people have received their daily dose of antioxidants. Now it appears that drinking a daily cup of tea might give you even more antioxidants. So how do you get your tea antioxidant levels up and free radicals down?

Are Packet Teas Good for You?

You might already drink tea everyday in the form of iced teas. So do ice teas give you the same tea antioxidant levels as freshly brewed tea? It really depends how you make your iced teas. If you make your iced tea up from a packet then chances are you are not getting the same amount of tea antioxidant levels then you would if you made your own iced tea.

Different brands of convenience ice teas have different levels of tea antioxidant levels. Some have barely anything and are not beneficial to your health while others have enough antioxidant levels to make a difference in your health. Research brands a little to find the level of antioxidants in each packet. Alternatively, just make your own the night before so that you can drink iced tea while on the go.

Hot or Cold

Some people believe that drinking hot tea is better than cold tea. The idea is that the hot tea releases more antioxidants. However there really is no difference between drinking freshly brewed tea and tea that has been sitting in your fridge the night before. So you can be assured that you are still getting a powerful punch of antioxidants whether you drink your tea hot or cold.

Types of Teas

The types of teas you drink are also important in determining the tea antioxidant levels in your diet. Herbal tea is popular but there has not been enough research about herbal tea antioxidants. Though antioxidants can also be found in herbal teas.

Green tea is thought to be the best green tea to prevent cancer while black tea is supposed to help prevent heart disease. The verdict is that it doesn’t really matter what type of tea you drink, black or green there are plenty of antioxidants to be found in tea.

Top Antioxidant Foods

Of all the foods in the world, there are a few in particular that are considered as being the top antioxidant foods. One of the top antioxidant foods is chocolate. That’s right, chocolate is actually good for you. Well not all types of chocolate.

Dark chocolate is actually the only type of chocolate that offers any nutritional benefit, and in particular antioxidants which help to fight off free radicals in the body. Dark chocolate is full of antioxidants because it is made from the cocoa bean, and this is the food with the highest antioxidant value on the planet.

The cocoa bean is one of the most complex foods because it contains over 300 chemically identifiable compounds, and the cocoa beans are packed with potent antioxidants known as flavenoids. These compounds work to boost good HDL cholesterol levels in the body, reduce blood pressure, and reduce bad cholesterol.

You need to realize however that just because dark chocolate is full of antioxidants, this certainly does not mean that you can eat as much as you want of it without consequences. After all, dark chocolate as with all chocolate is also full of calories, and so if you just sit around and chow down chocolate you will be getting antioxidants but you will also be consuming a ton of sugar and calories.

Another of the top antioxidant foods is broccoli. Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts are all great and full of antioxidants. They are able to help prevent cancer and ward off heart disease, as well as reduce the risk of breast cancer and other estrogen-sensitive cancers such as cancer of the ovaries and the cervix.

Your doctor will be able to offer you more information on antioxidants, what they are and how they work, and what foods you can find them in. The more of these foods you eat the healthier you will be, as long as you do it in moderation of course.

Before getting too heavily involved in drinking antioxidant juice, it is important to understand the purpose of antioxidants and how they can affect a person’s overall health. As the body goes thorough its daily life, there are numerous chemical reactions, causing some cells to break down as part of the process and other to break down because of the process. When the cells break down, they release free radicals into the system, which then scurry about trying to find something else on which to become attached. Typically, they will steal from healthy cells to keep their life afloat, often leaving the affect cell damaged.

Antioxidants send in an army to combat these free radicals, tricking them into thinking they are something to which the free radicals want to be attached and then removing them from the system. While the body also produces antioxidants naturally, the use of antioxidant juice can supplement the local efforts in getting rid of the free radicals.

Staying Ahead Of The Complex Process

As the daily battle against free radicals continues to rage, antioxidant juice is only one member of the fighting force. Additionally, it may not be enough to simply send in forces to gather up all of the free radicals. Research has shown the need for supplements of antioxidant enzymes as well to help remove them from the system.

While these enzymes may not rope them into a group and herd them out of the body, many do gather them together and make them more water soluble to be more easily excreted from the system. Adding these supplements to an antioxidant juice may help many of the bodily systems continue to function in a healthy manner.

Many people claim that their daily consumption of an antioxidant juice has also prevented cell and tissue damage, often restoring energy, reducing disease and leading to a healthier lifestyle. While none of the makers of an antioxidant juice claim it is a cure all, some fall just a little short of claiming their product is a miracle of life-giving juice.

Besides the traditional black tea that we have all been familiar with for a long time there are now many varieties of teas on the market. Green tea has now become quite commonplace but there are more different types of tea everyday. From oolong to herbal, what’s the best tea to drink?

What is White Tea?

White tea is relatively new to the market. It is also more expensive than other teas that have been on the market for longer. So what sets white tea apart from its darker cousins? For starters white tea has higher levels of white tea antioxidants. This is due to more than one factor.

White tea comes from the Camellia sinensis plant, the same plant that other teas come from. The difference is that white tea leaves are picked before they fully open. The name is derived from the white hairs that are still present on the leaves and buds of the plant at this stage of development.

The higher levels of white tea antioxidants is because of how little processing the leaves go through. Just like green tea white tea is not fermented. White tea had higher levels of white tea antioxidants than even green tea, previously thought to be the best tea when looking for high tea antioxidant levels.

The Benefits

If you don’t like the taste of green tea then white teas could be the right brew for you. Besides having plenty of white tea antioxidants, white tea tastes sweeter and lighter. The distinctive taste is winning over many fans.

Another benefit of drinking this tea besides the high level of white tea antioxidants is the lower level of caffeine. If you are looking to cut down on caffeine in your diet but still want to indulge in a cup of tea then this would be the ideal tea.

The cancer fighting properties of white tea are also remarkable. It is thought to be more effective than even green tea when it comes to inhibiting cancer causing enzymes. You can have real peace of mind when you drink a cup of white tea.