Antioxidants – In Your Food and in Your Body

In the beginning there were fruits and vegetables - but what they don’t tell us is that there were also antioxidants!  That’s because fruits and vegetables are the number one source of antioxidants for humans and animals alike.  Antioxidants are used in the body to attack and neutralize those potentially harmful substances called free radicals.  Let’s take a little more in-depth look at these two molecules and how they play a role in our health.

Antioxidants can be found in almost all fruits and vegetables.  As long as the food contains Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Vitamin A (or beta-carotene), selenium, or carotenoids then you are getting a good dose of antioxidants.  Free radicals, on the other hand, are molecules looking for an extra oxygen molecule to complete their molecular structure.  They want this extra molecule so bad that they’ll steal it from anywhere they can get it, including but not limited to molecules found in the body’s cell walls, cell organelles, and even DNA.  By losing an oxygen molecule, the now incomplete cellular structures have a hard time functioning the way they should.  In fact, this is exactly how cancer, heart disease and strokes may actually begin.  So, you see, the fact that free radicals are roaming around in our body trying to steal oxygen molecules is not a good thing.  Enter in the hero of the story – antioxidants.

Antioxidants wander through our bodies, looking for free radicals.  When they find them, the antioxidants actually donate one of their oxygen molecules to the free radicals.  Now the free radicals are happy and won’t cause trouble and the antioxidants go on their merry way.  Fine and dandy, the relationship seems to work well and everyone is happy.  However, the only way the whole process is going to work correctly is by having enough antioxidants to keep up with the demand of the free radicals.  So, where do we get these ever so important molecules?  In our diet, of course.

As mentioned earlier, antioxidants can be found in a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.  The produce that packs the greatest amount of these potent antioxidants are fruits and vegetables with bright, bold colors.  Let’s name a few – carrots, tomatoes, blueberries, strawberries, green, red, orange and yellow peppers, sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, spinach, chard…Are you getting the picture?  Reds, yellows, oranges, blues, purples, and greens.  If they are fresh and bright – eat them, and eat them a lot.

It’s so easy to incorporate antioxidants into the diet.  The benefits are too numerous to go into, but consider the impact a diet full of fresh fruits and vegetables can make.  In addition to aiding in the prevention of cancer, heart disease, strokes, cholesterol problems, and premature aging of the skin, eating plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables will also help you to get enough fiber, vitamins, and minerals in your daily food intake.

A couple of tips to remind yourself throughout the day as you make choices concerning your food are:

• Push for at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day
• Don’t cook your produce too long – you may leach out valuable vitamins and minerals
• Attempt to incorporate different colored fruits and vegetables into every meal and even at snack time
• Center your meals around a particular vegetable and add meats and other carbohydrates as secondary items
• Enjoy every mouthful!

 

 

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