"Antioxidant Rich Foods With Every Meal"
The postprandial state is a pro-oxidant state,
meaning that after each meal free radicals are produced
as our body assimilates the food,
and so you can't just have a bowl of berries
in the morning to meet our minimum
daily antioxidant needs and call it a day.
Each and every meal should contain
high antioxidant foods, which,
if you remember, means plants.
Antioxidant rich foods originate from the plant kingdom.
This is due to the thousands of natural
antioxidant compounds found naturally in plant foods.
So, for example, consuming fruits,
which are high in phenolic phytonutrients,
increases the antioxidant capacity of the blood,
and when they are consumed with
the standard American diet high fat
and refined carbohydrate, pro-oxidant,
and pro-inflammatory’ meals,
they may help counterbalance some of the negative effects.
Given the content and availability
of fat and sugars in the Western diet,
regular consumption of phenolic-rich foods,
particularly in conjunction with meals,
appears to be a prudent strategy
to maintain oxidative balance and health.
And of all fruits, berries may be the best.
So, for example, here's the spike in oxidation
caused by a Mediterranean meal
of pasta, tomato sauce, olive oil, and fried fish.
Obviously not enough tomatoes.
Add a glass of red wine,
which contains berry phytonutrients from grapes,
and we can bring down the level of oxidation,
but not blunt it completely.
So the meal needs even more plants.
In this study, they gave people standard breakfast items,
resulting in lots of oxidized cholesterol in their blood stream
1,2,3,4,5,6 hours after the meal.
But all it took was a cup of strawberries
with that same breakfast to at least keep the meal
from contributing to further oxidation.
Note though, without the strawberries,
look where we'd be at lunchtime.
Let's say we ate a standard American breakfast at 6 am,
then 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, noon.
If we didn’t eat that cup of strawberries with breakfast,
by the time lunch rolls around we'd already be
starting out in a hyper-oxidized state
and could just make things worse.
Since western eating patterns include
eating multiple meals a day, including snacks,
one can only speculate on the level of biological unrest.
But, at least if we had some berries for breakfast
we'd be starting out at baseline for lunch.
This acute protection is likely due
to the antioxidant effects of the strawberry phytonutrients.
Even better than baseline, how about our meal
actually improving our antioxidant status?
Here's measuring the antioxidant level
of one's bloodstream after a crappy meal.
It drops, using up our antioxidant stores,
but eat a big bunch of red grapes with the meal
and the antioxidant level of our bloodstream goes up,
such that our body is in a positive
antioxidant balance for a few hours.
Same thing after enough blueberries.
And imagine if in these ensuing hours between our next meal
we were sipping green tea or hibiscus?
We'd have this nice antioxidant surplus all day long.
What, according to the researchers, are the practical implications?
These data provide an interesting perspective
for advising individuals on food choices
when consuming a moderate to high fat meal is unavoidable.
Unavoidable?!
So, if we're like locked in a fast food joint or something?
Well, then they suggest chasing whatever
you’re forced to eat with some berries.
Reminds me of those studies on smokers
I talked about, suggesting those who smoke
should eat lots of kale and broccoli
to reduce the oxidative damage to their DNA.
Or...they could just not smoke.
In a single day, the systemic stress
of all the fat in your blood and redox imbalance
(being in a mild pro-oxidant state after meals)
may seem trivial.
Over time, however, these daily insults
can lead to complicated atherosclerosis,
contributing to hundreds of thousands of deaths a year.