Top 20 ORAC Foods

ORAC foods are the ones that attack aging at its roots and can help to slow down the effects of aging in humans. The fundamental cause of aging is decay of cells that make up your tissues and organs. While aging is natural and some decay will invariably occur with time, sometimes, due to various factors, the decay is accelerated. That's the time when you have premature aging. You see the symptoms of premature aging on your skin, in your falling dynamism, and on your way of life. But majority of the people are crazy about eternal youth. In the truest sense, this may be a myth. However, in practical life, you definitely can slow down aging and continue to look and feel younger for longer.

Antioxidant foods can be your top anti-aging aide. Normal metabolic activities in the body lead to production of free radicals from various oxidative processes. These free radicals are the real culprits in hastening aging. They are the ones who hit the cells randomly and damage their configuration and break them down. The more you have such free radical activity, the more damage will it cause to your cells and make you look and feel older. Antioxidant foods provide protection to the body from free radical activity and cell damage. They thus attack aging at its roots and offer truly effective solutions to retard aging. The mystery of these anti-aging foods is revealed in ORAC foods.

How powerful a food is in terms of antioxidant protection is known as antioxidant assay. And foods that have top antioxidant assay are called ORAC foods. Several studies show that eating foods and vegetables with high ORAC values - particularly spinach and blueberries - may help significantly to slow down aging in both body and brain.

According to USDA, "Early evidence for the protective power of high-ORAC foods comes from rat studies. Rats fed daily doses of blueberry extract for six weeks before being subjected to pure oxygen suffered much less damage to the capillaries in and around their lungs. In other tests, middle-aged rats were fed diets fortified with spinach or strawberry extract or vitamin E for nine months. A daily dose of spinach extract prevented some loss of long-term memory and learning ability normally experienced by 15-month-old rats. Spinach also proved most potent in protecting different types of nerve cells in two separate parts of the brain against the effects of aging, the researchers reported in the Journal of Neuroscience (vol. 18, pp. 8047-8055)."

Here's the list of top 20 ORAC foods as published by USDA:

Aging is a thing that slowly and gradually takes over your body quite before you actually begin to take notice of the effects. Good dieting, particularly taking ORAC foods, offer definite help to retard aging, but simultaneously a lot of stress is placed on regular exercising and maintaining a good and balanced lifestyle. Remember, anti-aging is not just a therapy. It's a way of life, a big picture that has to be adopted in its entirety for maximum results. ORAC foods are an indispensable thing in the big picture of anti-aging and wisdom lies in getting used to it from the very start.