When you are in a situation where you want to consider how your food affects your body, you'll find that one thing that you need to consider is measurement known as the ORAC, the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity. The ORAC measures the ability of the antioxidant in your food to take care of the free radicals in your food, and you'll find that the higher the ORAC score for a particular food is, the better it is for you. When you are looking around for ways to make sure that you are getting the most out of your food, you'll soon realize that finding food with a high ORAC score are going to be at the top of your list.

The first thing that you need to think about is what antioxidants can do with you. Recent research points to the fact that eating foods with a ORAC scores will translates to higher levels off antioxidant in your body. You'll find that when you are looking to make sure that your body doesn't suffer from damage from free radicals that eating foods that are high in terms of antioxidants is an important step.

There is a general belief that foods that are rich in antioxidants will lower the chance of cancer, and research is backing this up. Studies that involve rats who are given blueberry extracts (a great source of antioxidants) before being exposed to two days of pure oxygen suffer from a great deal less damage than they do without it. Overall, the rats that were fed materials that were high in antioxidants remained a great deal healthier, even under adverse situations than the ones that did not.

You'll also find that foods that have high ORAC scores are instrumental when it comes to keeping your brain as well as your body healthy and functioning at high capacity. For instance, leafy vegetables like spinach and broccoli have been shown to prevent some amount of long term memory loss as well as helping provide for the continued capability of functioning brain cells in middle-aged rats. When you take into account the fact that mental and cognitive function is something that we have to worry about as we get older, taking a look at what antioxidants can do for us is an important thing for us to consider.

Remember that when you are considering making sure that your diet is high in antioxidants that you do more than just look for supplements. More and more, people are realizing that you can do a great deal just eating the healthy foods in front of you, and that no matter how much of a shortcut that supplements seem, you should accept no substitutions when it comes to your health!