Food with the highest Orac Value?

[RAINRA]

Which is it acai? red beans goji?

[PMvegan]

Clove oil is pretty high, as I recall.

 

ORAC is simply one laboratory measure of a particular antioxidant (oxygen-radical-quenching) in a substance. In the real world there are other factors, such as synergies of antioxidants; as well, there are other types of radicals as well.

[RAINRA]

synergies of antioxidants" wow I did not know that? I never heard of this will look it up

[Im Your Man]

but perhaps also synergy of antioxydants with the oxydants in this same food. There's a study showing that antioxydants isolated from a whole food and put in pills as supplements are not working and may even have the opposite effects, because it contains only antioxydants and too much of them. There's no useless thing in nature, everything has a reason to be, so the oxydants in foods are important too otherwise the antioxydants lose their reason to be. The study was on thousands of people over decades and the group using supplements of vitamins A, C, E developped more risks of cancers than the other group. Like for all "scientific" research, we can debate on it's value, but the explanation above makes sense to me.

[RAINRA]

are Vega's antioxidants in from the plant ingredients or they added?

[Im Your Man]

I don't know I never bought Vega. But I think they focus on whole foods so maybe. Check in the ingredients if there's added vitamins, or only whole foods.

[veganmaster]

Essential oils are the highest, with clove oil being the winner by far, the most potent source of antioxidants found so far. But as far as ORAC power per gram (Trolox equivalent or whatever), spices are much more potent than berries. Clove, cinnamon, oregano, & cumin all come in before regular top foods like berries, red beans, etc. I've done a lot of research on this and compile my own top 50 list extrapolated from studies but I can't find it right now. Still, one must realize that adding tons of antioxidants can not make up for eating a lot of simple sugars and fats/oils (or animal foods of course). Healing potential is maximized on a very low fat high starch vegan diet. So if you are trying to maximize your healing potential increasing starches and further limiting fats in the diet will be vastly more effective than ANY additive actions, whether pill or "superfood." That's why "modern" drugs are nearly all failures, as nothing can compare to the huge effect of diet, our #1 contact with the environment. I go into greater detail here:

http://veganmaster.blogspot.com/2008/07/you-are-biological-herbivore.html