Buy Organic Fruit There Are More Antioxidants
Three types of fruits and vegetables were compared for antioxidant levels. This study was published in the “Journal Of Agricultural Food Chemistry In February 2003. The tested three types of growing methods, organic, sustainable and conventional. Conventional used herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, sustainable used just fertilizers and organic of course uses neither.
The research team studied three antioxidant foods corn, strawberries and marion blackberries. Organic and sustainability grown foods were found to have a greater amounts of antioxidants by a wide margin. Levels of antioxidants in sustainability grown corn were 58.5% higher than conventionally grown corn. Sustainable grown marionberries had 50% more antioxidants than conventionally grown Strawberries a rather low antioxidant fruit only had 19% more in both organic and sustainable food.
Surprisingly sustainable grown foods had the highest antioxidant levels overall, indicating that organic may not be best for antioxidant protection. The addition of fertilizers seemed to be the answer in this study.
These plants produce flavonoids which are the phenolic chemicals which provide the antioxidant action in the body. Herbicides and pesticides are not only toxic to the human body in their own right but interfere with the growth of phenols in the fruits and vegetables. Phenols are the chemicals that protect the plant from disease and transfer that ability when the fruits and vegetable are eaten.
Journal Agricultural Food Chemistry February 26, 2003;51(5):1237-41
From The Natural Healing Newsletter
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