Greetings, it's Eric Bakker the naturopath from New Zealand. Thanks for coming back.
I've got a lot more light coming into this room now. I finally got rid of this tree.
There was this gnarly, awful tree in the neighbor's yard. The dentist's yard. I've got a dentist
next door. And I said to the guy, "Come on, it's hanging over the house, it's getting
a bit damp." And so if you hear a guy outside with a bar or an axe or a chainsaw or something,
that's probably the guys working on the fence at the moment. So my apologies. But the light's
going to be good for the jungle in the back here.
We're going to talk about polyphenols today. So what the heck are polyphenols? It sounds
like a weird kind of a name or some sort of creature or something. In fact, these are
compounds found in a variety of natural things; plants and seeds and nuts. We're going to
talk a bit about that today. We're going to make a few videos about polyphenols to explain
a bit about this.
So polyphenol is a very powerful compound found in a plant. There's four or five different
types of polyphenols. There are phenolic compounds and many different types. Flavonoids for example,
belong in lignans, and you might've heard these names. They fall under the polyphenol
category. So these are the things that make plants brightly colored. So when you look
at bright red or bright purple, or a black color, like a really dark color, it's usually
the polyphenol content that's responsible for the coloration of that food. And polyphenols
are very, very healthy for you. They're found in various foods. Onions, for example, contain
different flavonoids like hesperetin and rutin, which are polyphenols.
I eat onions and garlic every day. I think they're a fantastic food to eat. But tea,
green tea. You probably know about green tea, with the polyphenol content. Epigallocatechin
or some flipping thing. ECC-G or something. It's a long name, but that's also a flavonoid
found in green tea. And then of course, we've got red grapes, red wine, we've got dark chocolate.
We've got with berries, with the beautiful purple berries. I mean, these are fantastic
things to eat.
The antioxidant property is quite high with the polyphenols, but so is the anti-inflammatory
component with some of these. So it's really worth looking at polyphenols as part of your
diet, or include foods that have a good polyphenol content. Particularly because of their effect
on so many areas of the body, like the blood vessels. They also reduce free radical damage,
so they absorb oxygen. They suck oxygen up, basically.
So they stop a lot of damage, DNA damage done to cells. And there are many, many studies
now that show that people with a high polyphenol content have a big ability to reduce the risk
of developing heart disease and diabetes, in particular. So you really want to include
these things into your diet on a regular basis, the polyphenols. Fantastic to eat. So maybe
you're drinking tea every day now, or maybe like me, you like berries. I mean, we've got
over 30 blueberry bushes in the yard. We grow lots of blueberries for this reason; because
there's so good for the eyes and the brain and the small blood vessels.
So the value, the ORAC value, the oxygen reducing absorption capacity value; ORAC value, O R
A C is what we define the level. How important the ORAC value, how high, the ability to absorb
oxygen will give you an understanding on how powerful the polyphenols are. If we look at,
for example, a red delicious apple will have an ORAC value of over 5,000, whereas a green
apple will sit well below it. Now, why? Well, that's because the red apple is red. It's
got that red coloring.
Blueberries have an ORAC value over 6,000. This is per 100 grams. So, 100 grams of blueberry
is 6,000. So that's quite high. But when you get up to the dark chocolate, we're getting
up into the tens of thousands with the dark chocolate. Baking chocolate, that awful, bitter,
bland, dark baking chocolate is sky high in antioxidants. So, it just goes to show. And
you can get baking chocolate quite cheap.
They did a study several years ago, where they were giving people one bar of chocolate
a day, and they found that it reduced their blood pressure because of the dark chocolate.
Isn't it incredible? So that's a bit about polyphenols, and the foods you find them in.
And the fact that they are antioxidant primarily, but also many are anti-inflammatory. So you
really want to be looking at a diet that contains plenty of foods containing polyphenols in
them. This is the reason why your grandma always said to you, "Don't leave the table
until you finish your vegetables."
So some foods contain more carbohydrates than polyphenols. If you look at brown rice, that's
got a polyphenol content to it. That gives the rice the brown coloring, but the carb
content is quite high on it. Whereas vegetables have got a much lower carb content and a much
higher nutrient content. Plenty of water, plenty of nutrients in them, and a lot of
vitamins in them. And that's why vegetables and fruits are so good to eat, to include
in your diet. If you want to live a bit longer than you are now, I would say. Anyway, that's
all about polyphenols. And we'll catch up with you in the next video. Thanks for tuning
in.