ACAI BENEFITS THE FRENCH ANOMALY - THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF ANTIOXIDANTS The people of France are famous for eating many foods that should give them health problems, such as sugars, cheeses (the French have over 300 cheeses they consume), fats, white flour, and more. Despite this, the French people have a low incidence of heart disease. Does that make sense to you? If it does not, you are not alone. The medical community has been baffled by this for years. The answer appears to be the red wine that the French people consume. RED WINE The French are also famous for consuming large amounts of red wine as part of their diet. It is the anthocyanins found in red wine grapes that has long been held to account for the low incidence of heart disease in France. Even more powerful than that, Acai Berry has 10-30 times the antioxidant capacity of red wine grapes! It is the amazing array of powerful antioxidants (and other nutritional aspects) of Acai and Pomegranate that make them so healthy for you. For one thing, they contain far more anthocyanins than red wine. YOUR HEALTH – THE IMPORTANCE OF ANTIOXIDANTS & ORAC Many marketers of superfruit products are telling you that ORAC values are the key to understanding why you should use their product. So, what is an ORAC value? ORAC - means Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity. It is the best of three ways to measure antioxidant capacity. The higher the number, the greater the antioxidant capacity. Scientists are quick to confirm that antioxidants are essential not only to good health, but to fighting aging and age-related disorders. (For those of you interested only in the anti-aging qualities of Acai). The ORAC method is particularly useful when measuring the antioxidant capacity of fruits and vegetables and without assessment tools like these, we may not have understood the significance of Acai and Pomegranate. As a footnote, the methodology of ORAC was developed by the National Institute on Aging and standardized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). TO OPTIMIZE YOUR HEALTH, HOW MANY ORAC UNITS SHOULD YOU BE CONSUMING A DAY? According to the USDA, you should be consuming 3,000 ORAC units of fruits and/or vegetables a day. In fact, most of us consume only about 1,000 to 1,200 ORAC units per day. In order to reach the recommended ORAC values, we would have to eat 5-9 servings of fruit and vegetables a day. Are you consuming anywhere near that amount of fruits and/or vegetables a day? Very few of us are. Why are such high amounts required per day? To have a significant impact on plasma and tissue antioxidant capacity. So when Mom told you to eat your fruits and vegetables, she was not kidding. We have now learned that fruit (and in particular superfruits) offer the greatest health benefits. PUTTING ACAI INTO HEALTH PERSPECTIVE ANTIOXIDANTS & FREE RADICALS –THE HEALTH IMPACT ON YOU Before reviewing each of the benefits noted above, let’s first discuss antioxidants and free radicals. It will become clear why you need antioxidants to overcome the devastating impact of free radicals. It is an important issue and one that scientists, medical professionals, and nutritionists have studied for many years.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 23:26:45 +0000
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