Why Antioxidant Balance Is So Important

Americans have been fooling themselves.

More nutritional experts than ever before are convinced of this fact.

For too long, they believe, consumers have been concentrating on individual vitamins instead of looking at the bigger nutritional picture. And it’s a picture that is bigger than most American consumers — or nutritionists for that matter — ever imagined.

But consumers aren’t entirely to blame. For decades, nutritional researchers have been trying to isolate those vitamins and nutrients — beta carotene, vitamins C and E, and lycopene, to name only a few — that presumably provide fast tracks to better health.

Now many of these researchers are having second thoughts. As New York Times health blogger and columnist Tara Parker-Pope stresses, “the health benefits of certain foods aren’t likely to come from a single nutrient but rather combinations of compounds that work better together than apart.”

Numbered among this group is Dr. Robert Keith, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System nutrition and health expert and professor of nutrition and food science.

As he stresses, fruits and vegetables, for example, don’t just contain the usually cited vitamins such as C and E but also are loaded with other antioxidants and phytochemicals that scientists only now are beginning to understand.

“It’s not just one thing but lots of things that are derived from fruits and vegetables that keep us healthy,” Keith says.

Nutritional scientists even have begun speaking of an antioxidant balance, stressing that antioxidants are most effective when they are working in tandem with others. This explains why Keith has advised his students and Extension clients not to look to vitamin supplements as the sole or even principal source of antioxidants.

Indeed, when you rely solely on supplements instead of whole foods, you run the risk not only of failing to balance your nutritional profile but also of throwing it out of kilter, he says.

At the University of Wollongong in Australia, Dr. David R. Jacobs, who was interviewed by Parker-Pope, offers another term for this emerging view — food synergy — the view that health benefits derived from certain foods don’t come from a specific nutrient but from combinations of compounds that work together.

But the challenge remains of turning a younger generation of Americans away from nutritional quick fixes, such as supplements, and toward healthy eating.
Keith is among the first to concede that challenge will not be an easy one.
Surveys show that less than one-third of American adults eat the minimum recommended amounts of five fruit and vegetable servings a day — a shortcoming that has persisted for more than a decade, according to officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Still, there are creative ways to enhance interest in these types of foods. For example, vegetables, in addition to being eaten plain, can be mixed into casseroles or flavored with olive oil.

Also, instead of nutritionally puny iceberg lettuce typically used in salads, Keith recommends greener types of lettuce that pack a stronger nutritional punch. Also, instead of limiting salads to the standard mix of lettuce and tomatoes, add other items such as broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber and bell pepper. This ensures greater exposure to an array of antioxidants and phytochemicals — the antioxidant balance that he and other researchers recommend.

Likewise, hamburger aficionados who can’t get by without at least one burger fix a week should consider loading their sandwiches with more green lettuce, tomatoes and onions.

Moreover, if you’re one of countless Americans who have trouble incorporating the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables into your diet on a daily basis, fruit juices — grape, orange, apple and cranberry, in particular — are viable options.

However, if you’re dealing with weight problems, use these juices sparingly. That’s because the calories in fruit juices add up quickly, Keith says. Also, juices can’t substitute for the dietary fiber readily available in many fruits.
Breakfast is another good time to incorporate fruits, either with whole-grain cereals or separately.

Posted by Jim Langcuster at November 7, 2007 11:25 AM