Antioxidant Rich Foods With Every Meal
After each meal, free radicals are produced as our body assimilates the food. So, we can’t just have a bowl of berries in the morning to meet our minimum daily antioxidant needs, and call it a day. Each meal should contain high-antioxidant foods — plants. Antioxidant-rich foods originate from the plant kingdom. This is due to the thousands of natural antioxidant compounds found in plant foods.
For example, consuming fruits, which are high in phenolic phytonutrients, increases the antioxidant capacity of the blood. In contrast, the Standard American Diet, a high-fat and refined carbohydrate “pro-oxidant and pro-inflammatory” lifestyle merely consists of any antioxidants.
In a study, they gave people standard breakfast items, resulting in lots of oxidized cholesterol in their bloodstream one, two, three, four, five, six hours after the meal. But, all it took was a cup of strawberries with that same breakfast to at least keep the meal from contributing to further oxidation. Note, though, without the strawberries, look where we’d be at lunchtime. Let’s say we ate a standard American breakfast at 6 am, then 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, noon. If we didn’t eat that cup of strawberries with breakfast, by the time lunch rolls around, we’d already be starting out in a hyper-oxidized state and could just make things worse. Since western eating patterns include eating multiple meals a day, including snacks, one can only speculate on the level of biological unrest.
But, at least if we had some berries for breakfast, we’d be starting out at baseline for lunch. “This acute protection is likely due to the antioxidant effects of the strawberry phytonutrients.”
Even better than baseline, we should have our meal improve our antioxidant status. Here’s measuring the antioxidant level of one’s bloodstream after a crappy meal. It drops, using up our antioxidant stores. But, eat a big bunch of red grapes with the meal, and the antioxidant level of our bloodstream goes up, such that our body is in a positive antioxidant balance for a few hours. Same thing after enough blueberries. And, imagine if these ensuing hours between our next meal, right, we were sipping green tea, or hibiscus? We’d have this nice antioxidant surplus all day long.
Rigorous scientific studies involving more than 100,000 people combined have declared that lifestyles rich in antioxidants can help prevent chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and cataracts. Top antioxidant foods include pecans, blueberries, strawberries, artichokes, goji berries, raspberries, kale, spinach, and walnuts.
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