Is The Antioxidant-Craze Crazy?

It seems that antioxidants are being jammed down our throats lately, both literally and figuratively, with the slews of new antioxidant-enriched products and their promises to prevent everything from aging to cancer. Not only are antioxidants becoming more popular, but the common sources of them are also changing.

We've all known for a while now that red grapes and hence red wine have high antioxidant levels, but nowadays people are more likely to fight cancer by pounding pomegranate juice or trying to pronounce acai than by doing something as pedestrian as eating grapes or drinking wine or grape juice. Foods and products that are fortified with these new sources of antioxidants are all the rage right now. And as with any health craze, some of the new products actually contain the benefits of antioxidants and fight off free radicals, while others just look like they have added antioxidants because they're simply flavored like antioxidant-rich berries.

We've tried out several of the new antioxidant-rich products and examined their ingredients. Some are better than others, but at the end of the day, any of these foods are better for you than some other so-called "diet" foods like cream cheese wrapped in bacon. While these products may or may not keep us cancer free for the rest of our lives, they do add taste and variety to our diets, and so we think this craze is anything but crazy. Check out some of these fun variations:

1. Acai Berry Emergen-C

We love Emergen-C, but it looks like their Acai flavor is simply that - made to taste like acai berries without any of their antioxidant benefits. So don't buy this flavor if you like their Pink Lemonade better, but these little packets do provide tons of nutrients and a great energy boost in the middle of the day. Try skipping your afternoon Starbucks and mixing water or seltzer with some of this fizzy powder. It contains 1,000 mg of Vitamin C and 32 active mineral complexes. You don't even need acai in there for all of that vitamin goodness to do wonders for your hair, skin, and immune system.

2. Absolut Los Angeles

This new limited edition vodka is flavored with an all-natural symphony of blueberry, acai berry, acerola, cherry, and fruity notes of pomegranate. Sounds like the perfect supermodel's meal, right? Just joking. This stuff may not actually benefit your body in any particular way, but over ice it makes for a delicious, refreshing, fruity martini, and you'll feel very trendy drinking it. If you want a real shot of antioxidants, drink Absolut LA with a splash of fresh cranberry juice, and you'll have the very best of both worlds!

3. Mott's Plus Pomegranate Sauce

Each flavor of the new Mott's Plus sauce is fortified with different nutrients, and one of our favorites is the Pomegranate flavor, which is really and truly enhanced with the benefits of antioxidants. This stuff is also delicious, all-natural, and only has fifty calories per serving. We think it's the perfect snack for women who want to treat their bodies well.

4. Jamba Juice Acai Super-Antioxidant

We don't recommend sucking down high calorie smoothies all day long. However, this popular new Jamba Juice flavor does contain real acai juice with all of its benefits, plus the "Antioxidant Power Boost" that they normally charge you an arm and a leg to add. The "original" (medium) size has over 1,000 percent of your daily Vitamin C needs, but it also has 420 calories and almost 30 percent of your daily carbohydrates. The bottom line is that these smoothies are healthy, but they eat more like a meal than a snack, so you should probably try to eat them that way, too.

5. Endangered Species Organic Health Dark Chocolate with Cacao Nibs, Yacon & Acai

This is an organic, vegan dark chocolate with not only the antioxidants of acai berries, but yacon root, which acts as a natural sugar and breaks down slowly in the digestive system. We love hearing that chocolate can be good for us, but the truth is that dark chocolate itself is loaded with antioxidants, so adding extra healthy ingredients isn't really necessary. This stuff is certainly better for you than a Hershey bar, but we think you should find any dark chocolate bar you like the taste of and enjoy antioxidants in their most pleasurable form!

Comments

[nastyvirus]

I think to counter the antioxidant craze, we should all swallow oxidizers.

[grayforester]

But it's so much easier just to smoke cigarettes.

[Quotidien]

Are you kidding me?

"If you want a real shot of antioxidants, drink Absolut LA with a splash of fresh cranberry juice, and you'll have the very best of both worlds!"

This is the problem with random advice: you potentially get the most inappropriate recommendations. I come here to read an article that could show me how to do the right thing for my body, and here the author is suggesting to me that VODKA can be part my program towards good health.

As the French say: n'importe quoi. Which means, whatever..­.this is ridiculous.

[Goliadkin]

I am troubled by your assertion that this blog is not the moist reliable source of nutritional and lifestyle recommendations.

Especially since I still haven't mastered those red, white, and blue Jell-O shots that the authors recommended for the Fourth of July. Practice makes perfect!

[Quotidien]

touché my friend

[johnmorgan]

In Michael Pollan's book "In Defense of Food," he encourages you to avoid these expensive processed foods that add various trendy nutrients. He says, don't eat any foods your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize.

He specifically says that this craze over antioxidants is silly, because you get plenty of them if you just eat fruits and vegetables every day. The processed foods described in this article are developed for profit by big corporations hoping to mislead you with buzz-words like "antioxidants," when in fact they are probably less healthy for you because they are farther from the natural source.

The corporations tell you it's healthy to avoid "saturated fats," because then they can sell you many processed foods with these new buzzwords on the box ("no saturated fats"), but the (unprofitable) truth they don't like to say is "Eat less meat." Eating less meat is simpler, cheaper, and healthier than buying more trendy processed foods.

[brooklyncitizen]

Great post. I was just going to post on Michael Pollan.

Nothing like branding to separate you from your money. The blog post is really off the mark on so many levels. Smoothies don't have to be high-calorie and they don't have to be expensive. Just eating whole foods will get you all the anti-oxidant power you need...and your body is so grateful. Supplements are good to target specific things (i.e., joint strength) but overall consuming these foods from the link below will go a long way to ridding your self of silly health imbalances as well as more serious ones.

http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php

I have been a vegetarian for several years and have moved towards more raw food diet these last 2 years....t­he changes are incredible­...aging really is slowed and you realize what a load of nonsense we are fed by the people that manufacture our "food"..Ju­st keep it simple...a­nd forget the vodka (gag).

[Susej]

I have to agree.
If you read the ingredients in the back you will be disappointed to find apple juice, high fructose corn syrup at the top of the list.

[AProudRepublican]

Absolutely - we need to stop relying on processed foods and start relying on "real" foods. I'm mostly vegan, and I eat about 1 1/2 lbs of vegetables a day - half raw, half cooked, and lots of leafy greens; 3-4 servings of fruit a day; about a cup of antioxidant rich beans; avocado daily; and nuts/seeds (I make wonderful dressings and sauces using nuts instead of processed oils). I love my food, and it's extremely nutrient-rich. It took a little organizing and planning at first to eat this way, but now it's just a way of life, and I feel extremely blessed... almost as if I've found one of life's great secrets. :)

[norkas]

nice post a proud republican and it is true Natural foods and the food groups you suggest are great. Pills jsut do NOT do it and will never replace natural foods.

[Gasparilla]

Eat lots of raw fruits and vegetables. Eat as much unprocessed food as possible. Cut back on the red meat and fats. I do love bacon, though.

[trollsbwild]

Try turkey bacon. It's not perfect, but almost as good in taste and it's healthy.

[gennifer6]

Rarely do I disagree with you ladies on anything, but this one I have to put my $.02 in on....
We're still eating and drinking artificial­ly-enhance­d or "manufactured" products. I agree that these products are much healthier for you than typical "diet" food items, but they are also very expensive. If I'm going to spend that much money on a drink I'd like to know that it is providing me with benefits worth my dollar. I think it's smarter to go with what you already know, as in drinking red wine. I love to make chocolate covered blueberries, you get the benefits of eating blueberries with the lovely taste of chocolate to go along with. I also brew my own tea. Tea bags are very cheap. I buy bags of blueberry, pomegranate, whatever kind of tea you want, and box of white tea bags (white tea is huge in anti-oxidants) , and brew a pot together, half flavoured tea and half white. Or you can make your own fruit smoothies with plain yogurt, ice and your fruit.

Sure, it may take some time, but if you make the time, you know what you're getting and spending a lot less money. Also, you'll notice the benefits on a smaller-scale. Whether this stuff really fights cancer or not remains to be seen, but you will notice it is easier to get over colds and flu, or not catch them in the first place.

That's all I got. ;)

[zizyphus]

If you want to be the healthiest, don't buy food that has passed through machines. You can get more health benefits from dried prunes than all this fancy stuff.

People would live longer eating tree leaves than what passes for food these days. I say that because I have spent many hours poring through the phytochemical databases. Just about any edible leaves contain many nutrients not available in pills. In addition, these hundreds of fascinating chemicals work in synergy with each other in unimaginable ways. These synergies aren't available in pills.

Plus, when science/commerce "discovers" some new plant constituent that shows promise for improving health, it is touted, and put in pill. Forget the pills. Eat whole foods. Eat more leaves. Eat fresh berries. Just say no to machine foods.