ORAC stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity
This is the standard by which scientists measure antioxidant activity in foods and supplements.ORAC stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity. This is it’s capacity for fighting free radicals which are the cause of cancers, reduced immune system capabilities and other diseases.
Antioxidants And Free Radicals
- Antioxidants protect the body’s cells from damage caused by free radicals.
- Antioxidants maintain health, prevent, and/or minimize damage by supporting the very proteins, cells, tissues and organs that are targeted by free radicals.
- Foods that score high in an ORAC antioxidant analysis may protect cells and their components from oxidative damage, according to ORAC studies of animals and human blood at the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s (ARS) Human Nutrition Research Center On Aging at Tufts University in Boston. ARS is the chief scientific agency of the United States Department Of Agriculture (USDA).
Free Radicals are unstable molecules that constantly attack the body from the outside (caused by sunlight, pollution, electromagnetic radiation, etc.), and from the inside due to normal metabolism and living. These unstable molecules, through a self-perpetuating chain reaction, generate millions of new free radicals that damage proteins, cells, tissues and organs.
One of the best ways to fight free radicals is by choosing the right foods.
The more free radicals a food can absorb, the higher its ORAC score. The higher its ORAC score, the better it is at helping our bodies fight diseases like cancer and heart disease and other diseases.Plant foods have the highest ORAC scores are are best at fighting disease.
Studies show that eating plenty of high ORAC foods:
- Raises the antioxidant power of human blood 10 to 25 per cent.
- Prevents some loss of long term memory and assisted learning ability in middle-aged rats.
- Maintains the ability of brain cells in middle-aged rats to respond to a chemical stimulus – a function that normally decreases with age.
- Protects rats’ tiny blood vessel capillaries against oxygen damage.