Antioxidants are the latest craze in healthy eating, and for good reason. Antioxidants can help prevent cancer, boost your immune system, and prevent aging. Here are the facts about antioxidants and how to get more in your diet.

Health Facts

Antioxidants can slow or prevent the oxidation of other molecules. This is important because oxidation reactions can produce free radicals, which can cause cancer. They also can keep cells healthy, which important for many aspects of health in the human body. If you eat and drink fruit, teas and berries high in antioxidants you can achieve greater health according to some studies. For example, The University of Florida found, in a cell-culture model, that the tropical berry called açaí (pronounced ahh-sigh-ee) causes leukemia cells kill themselves. The berry worked in up to 86 percent of the tests according to the study by Alexander G. Schauss, Ronald L. Prior, Xianli Wu, Boxin Ou, Dejian Huang,Dinesh Patel, and James P. Kababick in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry,12 Jan 2006, pp 8598 - 8603. Foods high in antioxidants have also been found to have the ability to keep skin cells healthier, longer. This helps to prevent aging and cancer.

Food High in Antioxidants

There are many foods that you can eat that contain high levels of antioxidants. Berries such as strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and black berries are all good choices. Pomegranates are also a good choice. Some of the most popular health drinks use pomegranate juice as a significant ingredient. Most teas contain high levels of antioxidants. Teas that contain the most antioxidants are green and white teas. When making these teas make sure to let them steep for quite a while to get the maximum benefits. One of the latest foods to be found full of antioxidants is dark chocolate. That's right, chocolate can be good for you! The darker chocolates with the highest concentrations of cocoa have the most antioxidants and are the best choice. Choose chocolates that have at least 60% cocoa.

Alcohol and Antioxidants

Drinking a little is a great way to boost the power of antioxidants. According to researchers Korakot Chanjirakul, Shiow Y Wang, Chien Y Wang, and Jingtair Siriphanich at the United States Department of Agriculture and the Kasetsart University in Thailand, adding alcohol to antioxidant-rich berries increases their antioxidant capacity. This finding was published in the study Natural Volatile Treatments Increase Free-radical Scavenging Capacity of Strawberries and Blackberries. One way to use this finding is to make cocktails and mixed drinks out of 100% berry juice. How about a Mona Vie cocktail?


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Lana Hawkins authors the Fit, Healthy Self Blog. New health and fitness information you can use now is published regularly. Using it will prolong and improve your life. Want to spend only 30 minutes on exercise that gets you strength and cardio benefits at once? Fit, Healthy Self has all you need to get and stay healthy. Sign up for the Free Fitness Report at the bottom of the page.