Top Antioxidants In Foods

Who wouldn't want to help the body fight off chronic disease? Some new research suggests that eating a generous serving of strawberries a day supplies your body with a rich source of antioxidants in foods.

Experts tell us that the oxidative stress caused by free radicals produced when your body digests food or if you're exposed to sources like tobacco smoke or radiation can lead to heart disease, chronic illness or even cancers. Antioxidants help to delay, perhaps even prevent, that from happening.

While first coming to public awareness in the 1990s when science began to understand how free radical damage might work, antioxidants have gotten lots of attention over the years.

Early research showed that low levels of antioxidants brought greater risk of disease, the findings were seized upon by the food and supplement industry. Today, antioxidant supplements bring in $500 million a year, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon, though there is little research to support that taking any single antioxidant provides any protection from disease.

Strawberries, red, juicy and sweetly delicious, have the happy distinction of being one of the richest, natural sources of a host of beneficial antioxidants. A very small recent study found that these delicious berries provide one of the top antioxidant sources.

To prove it, the team gave 12 healthy volunteers 4 cups of Sveva strawberries that they were to eat each day for a total of 16 days. Turns out there was a higher level of antioxidants measured in the participants' blood samples after the test.

The levels held up even a month later.

Strawberries are a surprisingly delicate fruit, and when food scientists looked at storage they found that the vitamin C and antioxidant levels dropped after just 2 days. After this, they're still fine to eat, and good sources of nutrients, they just don't bring you as much as they could when fresh.

One thing you might do to help your strawberries stay fresh is to put them in the cold storage bins of your fridge, where the air is more humid. A sealed container will also work well. When shopping look for produce that's most red and vibrantly colored.

The thing is, eating large quantities of strawberries, no matter how ripe and delicious, isn't the easiest thing to do for most people. They're a popular choice, but you'll need to eat a bowlful to take in 5 ounces.

If you're no fan, or are allergic to strawberries, there are other options, especially other berries (cranberries, raspberries or blackberries) that you can try instead. You might consider oranges, pineapple, prunes, walnuts or pecans as other good sources for protective antioxidants.

Beyond these antioxidants in foods, grains and some meat, poultry and fish are also natural ways to take in helpful antioxidants. Nutrition experts continue to urge all of us to regularly choose a variety of good-for-you fruits, veggies, and whole grains, full of antioxidants and their helper molecules, to keep your body healthy and life-altering chronic disease at bay.