Although acai berry is well known as a super food on diet in health industry. There are many advantages and benefits that are now fully discovered by scientists. Acai berry has some excellent capabilities such as supplement on diet, nutritious and good taste juice. However, one of the most outstanding benefits that acai berry has is the high level of antioxidants. But the first thing is, what is antioxidant?

What is Antioxidant?

We suggest you to understand antioxidant in “Chemical sense” so that you would know how important it is. First, oxidation is a chemical reaction of electrons that damages cells by producing free radicals. While antioxidants slow down or even prevent the oxidation process of other molecules. It also destroys the free redical intermediates and stop the chain reactions of oxidation. Although oxidants are necessary for life, the fact that they’re damaging means that many plants and animals contain multitudes of different antioxidants to help slow, but not deplete the oxidants. If the antioxidants level is low, you may have oxidative stree which may lead to strokes and neurodegenerative diseases.

Currently it is not completely proven that oxidative stress is caused by low level of antioxidants. While more researches are done on this topic, the truth may be discovered in the future.

Now you know that antioxidants is important, there is no straight-forward way to assess the level in fruits and vegetables. Scientists and researchers now use the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) system to measure how strong is the antioxidants. Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Polyphenolic antioxidants, and Carotenoids (lycopene, carotenes) are now measured by this system also.

Acai berry and Antioxidants

For the foods, especially acai berry, antioxidants are also widely used as a additive of food. The main job of antioxidants is to protect foods against deterioration. Some people may seal fruits and vegetable into a bag and keeping them away from light or cover the food with wax so as to keep those food fresh. However, oxidation will still occurs even though it will take longer. Moreover, oxidants usually “attacks” fats which is unsaturated and turn those fats into rancid. While it often occurs on meat, oxidants will cause discoloration and a sulfurous or metallic flavor. Therefore oxidation in fat-rich foods should be fully, completely avoided. One point to note that since oxidation will still occurs in fruits and vegetables, most of the time sulfurous antioxidants will be sprayed on and air dried to help slow down the decay process.

Now you know that antioxidants is very important in slowing down the process or effects from aging to maintaining human health. People are now becoming more interested in different foods which contains high level of antioxidants. Acai berry is no doubt the best fruits in this case. Compare to red wine, acai berry contains 10 – 30 times more the amount of anthocyanins. This article also prove that antioxidants is one of important elements in maintaining good health of human body. Researchs are continued on acai berry and more benefits will soon be discovered. Hope that one day this will be a critical on curing cancer.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 9th, 2009 at 9:43 am and is filed under Benefits Of Acai. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.