The ORAC, or Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, is an index that shows the amount of antioxidants in a single food source. It has become an important indicator of a fruit or vegetable’s ability to eliminate free radicals that damage cells in the human body.
Free radicals
Imagine rust forming on metal. As rust eats away the surface, the metal erodes and eventually becomes unusable. This is how free radicals attack our body - they weaken our cells, organs, tissue and other important parts, leading to diseases such as cancer, heart ailments, osteoarthritis and dementia.
The ORAC scale
The ORAC test identifies and measures important antioxidants in a food source. Foods with a high ORAC score can raise the antioxidant levels in the blood by up to 25 percent. Doctors recommend that we consume fruits and vegetables with a total ORAC score of 1,750 per day.
Different plants have different levels of antioxidants. You may consume five kinds of fruits and get only 1,300 ORAC units. Yet a handful of blueberries can give you an ORAC score of 9,000 per 100 grams. The USDA’s recommended level of ORAC units is 3,000 to 5,000 daily.
Acai tops the ORAC list
Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries and pomegranates score high on the ORAC index. But no single food source comes close to the ORAC score of the acai berry from Brazil.
A new research published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry shows that the acai has the highest ORAC antioxidant value of any food.
Compared to blackberries (53), pomegranates (105), and blueberries (92), acai has an amazing ORAC score of 1,027 per gram. Some samples of freeze-dried acai even turned out ORAC results of up to 50,000.
While these figures are impressive, they do not apply to all acai. Acai berries that have been frozen, spray dried or air dried have a lower ORAC score because many of the phytochemicals, enzymes and nutrients of the acai fruit are lost in the procedure.
To achieve the highest ORAC values, buy only acai products that are properly freeze-dried.
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