Antioxidants in Foods Keep You Healthy

What if the best diet to keep you healthy, young, and protected from chronic disease isn’t a diet at all?
 
Forget the Keto, Paleo and Atkins plans. Eating more vegetables and fruits will provide you with antioxidants, those powerful little substances that are shown to prevent and/or delay cell damage. Cell damage occurs in our bodies from free radicals - unstable molecules formed naturally in all of us - from exercise, normal metabolism, sunlight, and environmental sources such as air pollution. These cause cell damage that contributes to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and eye diseases (NIH information here).
 
Antioxidants protect us from free radical damage, and they are easy to get in our diet from fruits and vegetables! The trick is to eat a variety of colors, and to aim for at least 5 servings daily. That means, for example, 2 fruits and 3 vegetables, or any other combination. If you can get up to 9 servings/day, even better.
 
Note: Antioxidant supplements are not recommended. They have not been found to be beneficial and they are sometimes outright harmful. Stick to foods.
 
For a more detailed look at antioxidants, visit my newspaper article here!
 
Just One Thing to do:  Add a vegetable a day to your intake; once that is a habit, add a fruit a day. Aim for 5-9 servings/day of total fruits and vegetables.

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