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ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbency Capacity) VALUES of Fruits and Vegetables.

All values are for 3_ ounce (100 gram) servings of the food. The higher the value, the more beneficial that food is to your health.

How to interpret ORAC Values: Long term free radical damage is now recognized as the greatest contributor to age-related degener-ative diseases. The U.S.D.A. tested a wide variety of foods for their oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) values.

When the U.S.D.A. tested mice with a blue-berry extract (equivalent to 3,000 ORAC units per day) several results became apparent: – when mice were fed blueberry extract prior to tests which place their capillaries under stress, both the fluid leakage and free radical damage was kept to a minimum.

Maintaining Blood Levels of Anti-oxidants is critical: In the tests conducted, the daily anti-oxidant capacity of the animal's blood was kept consistent over time. The ORAC units per day for the average individual calculated out to 3,000 - 5,000 units per day. The importance of this consistency cannot be over-stressed. The body's need for anti-oxidants and other nutrients changes on a daily basis. There is no substitute for whole foods or food based supplements. A combination of carotenes, flavonoids and other nutrients found in natural foods provides the greatest benefits over any nutrient take by itself. This is why Naturopathic physicians tell patients to “eat a rainbow of foods” on their plates daily. This “rainbow” represents a wide variety of foods with high anti-oxidant values.

How do you know what your anti-oxidant status is? There is no real way to predict when more anti-oxidants will be needed. How many people are going to eat multiple servings of fruits and vegetables per day to maintain these values? The only way to ensure that you are meeting your required daily anti-oxidants is to maintain a consistent diet of anti-oxidants.

You can keep a huge organic garden in your backyard, or buy groceries from an organic food co-op daily or take an anti-oxidant supplement like our VerryBerry which contains the 6 berries highlighted in the table, plus pomegranate juice which also has a very high ORAC score.