Ok, please don’t go crazy with me while I’m asking you this question. You might want to stick around for a bit after the question so you understand what we’re talking about, okay? Here we go…

Tell me how you feel when I give you this information: Your daily intake of antioxidants should be measured in micromoles of Trolox equivalents per 100 grams of the specific sample.

Now do you see why I told you not to be scared of me? If someone told me that, I’d probably just close the book, turn the page, or dismiss the source of this information because it means exactly “nothing” to me.

However, do not load. I’m going to walk you through the whole process, and by the end, I think you’ll not only be intrigued and comfortable with that statement, but you’ll also discover that it really means something to you, especially if you count your daily antioxidants. . Then the good news, so stick with me.

Ok, why was the statement made? If you’re someone who considers antioxidants to be an important part of your daily diet, and you should, you’ll want to know if you’re getting adequate amounts of them. Didn’t you know there was an “adequate” amount of antioxidants to eat every day? Yes, in the USDA’s own words, research shows that there are actually very specific ranges of daily intake for antioxidants. In order for antioxidants to do their job properly, it appears they must be taken within therapeutic ranges.

To put it another way, you’ll never get any benefit from antioxidants if you don’t take enough of them, and if you take too many, you won’t get any more benefit than you would if you only ate enough to get the job done right, which means staying within the ranges. dices.

So, in essence, you can eat too few antioxidants, or you can eat too many antioxidants. By the way, if you consume too many antioxidants, you won’t suffer any adverse or harmful effects, you just won’t get any more benefit from them than you would if you only consumed the amount within the range.

Whoops… now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s find out exactly what these “ranges” are. Until recently, the USDA recommended that an adult person consume a daily amount equal to between 1,000 and 5,000 ORAC. Recently, that number was revised. The USDA currently recommends that the average adult receive an optimal daily amount of 7,000 ORAC for complete free radical protection.

You may be wondering what is an ORAC. It is simply an abbreviation for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, which is a measure of the amount of one unit of antioxidant power. This is how the potency of an antioxidant is determined.

Well, this ORAC scale is expressed in the question I asked earlier, which was “…micromoles of Trolox equivalents per 100 grams of sample”. This is just a statistical statement explaining that ORAC units are measured by the weight of the food in question.

To put it another way, you measure the antioxidants in a specific food, say strawberries, by the number of ORAC units possible in 100 grams of strawberry. In order for you to consume the proper number of ORAC units per day, you must know this number if you are calculating ORACs yourself.

Therefore, if you want to eat several different fruits to meet your daily antioxidant requirements, you need to know how many ORACs are in each fruit so that you can eat the proper amount each day. That’s why you need to know how many ORACs are in so many ounces of fruit.

It can be a tricky calculation if you try to collect all the information and calculate it yourself. You’re in luck though because there are probably hundreds of charts with this information on the internet and all you have to do is search for something like “number of orac units in blocks”. You will find a table with many fruits, vegetables, and other foods that give you this information. Here are some of them already calculated for you below:

Fruit————————————————- ————-Service – ——————-ORAC————– ——– ORAC per 100g

acai berries (frozen pulp)————–4 oz (100 g) bag ———5,500— – ——- ———–5,500

strawberries ————————————-5 fruits (125 g) —— ——–4,500 ———————-3,600

Blueberries—————————————1/2 cup (70 g)– ————–4,450————–6,500

apple (Granny Smith) —————————1 (100g)————- – ——–3,900————–3,900

banana————————————————- ———1 (150 g) – ——————–1,300————– ——–880

strawberries ———————————— 5 fruits (125 g)——- ————– ———4,500———————–3,600

grapes (red) ————————————10 grapes (100 g)—- ————– ———1,300———————–1,300

sweet melon——————————–1/4 (400g)——— – —————————–960——————– —–240

orange ——————————————1 (100g)– – ——————-1,800—————————– ——-1,800

peach——————————————–1 (200g) – ———————3,600————–1,800

Now that you have this information and today you want to eat blueberries only as an antioxidant food, simply calculate the number of grams of blueberries you should eat today, which for 7000 ORAC would be about 1250 (5500/4 ounces) per ounce and 7000 divided by 1250 is equal to 5.6 ounces of blueberries you would need to eat.

What if you don’t want to eat a single fruit? What if you want to vary your fruits throughout the day? No problem. Let’s say you’d like to eat apples, bananas, and grapes to meet your daily antioxidant needs. Ok, for simplicity, let’s divide your ORACs evenly into three groups. This means that you will need to acquire approximately 2330 ORAC per fruit. However, sometimes it would not be practical to divide them strictly into three groups. I’ll show you why. All you need to do is calculate how many of each fruit you need to eat and eat more of the ones you like best.

So with apples, you would need to eat just one, which would give you 3,900 ORAC. Then, for bananas, you would have to divide 1,300 by 2,330, which would give you about 1.79 bananas. It would be wasteful and impractical to eat only 3/4 of a banana, so let’s eat two and get 2600 ORAC. You have now consumed 3,900 of the apple and 2,600 of the bananas, which equates to about 6,500 ORAC from these two fruits alone. All you need to meet your optimal daily needs for antioxidants is 500 ORACs and you intend to get them from grapes. All you need to eat is about 4 grapes because 10 grapes will give you 1300 ORAC which is about 130 ORAC per grape and all you need is 500 more ORAC. 4 times 130 equals 520.

So throughout the day you’ve eaten one apple, two bananas, and four grapes to reach your optimal intake of antioxidants. That was easy, huh? You can calculate this any way you want with any fruit you like. If you like certain fruits more than others, feel free to add more of them and less of the less favored ones.

That’s really good news, you have to admit. It’s not hard for you to eat the right amount of healthy, nutritious, and naturally protective foods every day and not have to stuff yourself in the process.

Also, keep in mind that you don’t have to restrict this list to just fruits. You can do the same with vegetables. Find your ORAC calculations by measurement online and then calculate how much of them you need to eat, per meal or snack and make a little graph to keep handy for your calculations and you’ll know how many of your favorite. (or not so favorite) vegetables you will need to eat every day to reach your ORAC goal.