Antioxidants are one of food’s good guys!
They work to protect your body from disease, infection and ageing. So it’s good to know then, that prunes have more antioxidants than any other fruit or vegetable tested.
Your body uses oxygen to help fuel metabolism; as it does it produces oxidising chemicals called free radicals. These degrade and damage your body’s cells, dramatically reducing your defences and leaving you more susceptible to premature ageing and disease, including heart disease and cancer.
The only way to defend ourselves against the destructive action of free radicals is with protective chemicals known as antioxidants. Antioxidants, nutrients that are found in all plant foods, help neutralise the oxidative process by ‘wrapping’ a protective coat around each and every one of our cells preventing free radical action. If we don’t have enough antioxidants, the free radicals can access our cells and damage them.
Working on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a Tufts University team has come up with a test to identify the antioxidant properties of fruits and vegetables, and they have ranked some in order of their levels of antioxidants.
The researchers have also run tests to demonstrate that the antioxidants translate into health benefits. The tests showed prunes, popular for relieving constipation, have far more antioxidants than anything else, followed by raisins, blueberries and blackberries. Kale comes next, than strawberries and spinach.