Warning: this is a geeky science post brought on by wondering about where color in leaves came from.
The wonderful thing about traveling is the amazing variety of fruits and vegetables that you see for sale on any given market day. Like this one in Guatemala:
And this one in Cambodia:
I got to thinking about the levels of anthocyanins, carotenes, etc. in colorful fruits and their anti-oxidant properties and wondered if there was any research that supports the contention that we should eat lots of green and red (or orange) vegetables for their anti-oxidant content. Should we all be putting lots of these on our cereal in the morning to boost our free-radical fighting capabilities?
Before I get too far in this discussion you must realize that the price of breathing oxygen in order to generate all the wonderful chemical energy that sustains our daily activities is that oxygen is highly destructive and leaves lots of loose ends (like hydrogen peroxide) that can do permanent damage (free radicals). That's why anti-oxidants are important, to scavenge the free radicals and eradicate them from your body. So what's the answer?
A big summary written by the European Food Safety Authority (and a few other published articles as well) indicates that there is no good evidence that increased consumption of anti-oxidants in the diet produces an increased anti-oxidant capacity in humans. The ingested anti-oxidants are likely thoroughly digested and any protective effects noted with their consumption is probably due to secondary reactions associated with the vitamins, minerals, or fiber in the food. But they taste good fresh out of the garden, so pile them on.
Here's my second day harvest of raspberries earlier this summer. Yum!
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