The conventional diet, unfortunately, is rarely providing us with enough. Antioxidant deficiency is a common cause of accelerated ageing and contributes to the development of diseases like cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension, Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, and many others.
Luckily, improving your health, longevity, and slowing down the ageing process is no longer a mystery. Oxidative damage, the common dominator in ageing and disease, is greatly reduced when antioxidant intake is sufficient.
Antioxidants are nutrients that help protect our body from oxidative damage and keep us strong and youthful. The main players are vitamins A, C, E, and betacarotene.
Betacarotene (vitamin A precursor) is found in red/orange/yellow vegetables and fruits. Vitamin C is also abundant in raw fruit and veg. Vitamin E is found in whole grains, nuts, seeds, and their oils.
To get the best protection against ageing and disease, we need foods that are high in antioxidants, daily. To make matters easy, I have listed 20 food sources that score the highest in their antioxidant potential.
Choose at least three foods daily, from the list below to enter the anti-ageing/disease prevention zone.
- 1/2 cup blueberries
- Half a pear, grapefruit or plum
- 1/2 cup blackcurrants, blackberries, raspberries or strawberries
- 1/3 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano
- 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
- 1 heaped tsp mustard
- 1/2 cup cherries
- An orange or apple
- 4 pieces of raw, organic dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
- 7 walnut halves
- 8 pecan halves
- 1/4 cup pistachio nuts
- 1/2 cup cooked lentils
- 1/2 avocado
- 1 cup cooked kidney beans
- 1/2 cup of raw, red cabbage
- 2 cups of broccoli
- 1 medium artichoke or 8 spears of asparagus
- 1/3 medium glass (150ml) organic, red wine
Improving your antioxidant potential and boosting your power of disease prevention has never been easier!