Holistic Living
Pure Prescriptions
Making it Easier to be Healthy
by Sydney L. Murray
Many health-conscious people have heard that you need five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, at a minimum, to be healthy. I know I cannot always get the proper amount of these nutritious foods and that is why I use New Greens™ from Pure Prescriptions, a company whose products I trust. After perusing their website I found one of the reasons why and it has to do with something called an ORAC score. This is what I found.
ORAC is an acronym you will hear more about which stands for the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity and is a unit value assigned by researchers to measure the antioxidant value of a given food. ORAC provides a superb and very applicable method of determining the overall antioxidant potency of foods. Foods with a high ORAC value are beneficial to the body by increasing plasma antioxidant levels, thereby protecting the cells and their components from damage by oxygen radicals.
Different types of fruit and vegetables have different ORAC scores. The recommended five fruit and vegetable servings will give you an ORAC score of 1,750 units. You could pick seven fruits with a low ORAC level and achieve only 1,300 ORAC units, or you could pick seven with high values and receive around 6,000 ORAC units or more. A large handful of blueberries would give you an ORAC score of around 6,000.
Many people are more concerned than ever about what they can eat to be healthy. One thing we can all agree on is if you live by the Standard American Diet, you will likely die by it. There has been a lot of press about the connection of the “SAD” diet and some chronic degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, obesity, metabolic syndrome x (a constellation of metabolic disorders that all result from the primary disorder of insulin resistance, which can lead to cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.)
Western developed countries are spending trillions of dollars per year on health care but are ironically getting sicker and sicker. Clearly something is being overlooked. The concept of symptom management with pharmaceutical intervention is failing miserably. We have more medications than physicians can keep up with, yet statistically we are suffering from more and more chronic disease. It is time we considered an alternative plan.
It’s a constant struggle to know what to put in your body and how to find supplements that give you the right amount of nutrition. Ideally we would all eat massive amounts of organic greens and fruit all day, but for most of us our busy lifestyles are not compatible with eating this way.
As determined by the USDA, here is a snapshot of foods with high ORAC scores. Topping the list are prunes, blueberries, blackberries, cranberries and strawberries. At the bottom of the list are yellow squash, zucchini, tomatoes, string beans and carrots.
Clinical Nutritionist and formulator, Dr. Chad Larson has developed products that help us maintain good health like New Greens for those of us on the run who don’t have the time to get the required amounts of fruits and veggies we need in order to maintain optimum health and vitality. And for a sweeter taste there is their new Berry Fusion™ which packs the power of over fifty energizing super-foods into a delicious, easy-to-mix beverage.
Larson offers, “We have all heard or read that 5-8 servings of fruits and vegetables per day will help prevent everything from acne to cancer, but less than 10 percent of the population actually does it. When the physiology as it was designed is broken down and examined, it becomes obvious that we are not made to live on refined grains, preservatives, and processed foods. Instead, what the body likes most is a variety of fruits, vegetables, high-quality proteins, and whole grains.
“So, what is it about fruits and vegetables that make them so good for our bodies? Probably lots of things, but most relevant to this discussion is the antioxidant value. One of the key common denominators between all the chronic degenerative diseases is free radical damage. Consumption of antioxidants from fruits, vegetables, and berries helps to prevent and reduce this type of oxidative damage.
“There are a lot of products on the market that claim to be high in antioxidants and have a high ORAC value, but the proof is in the test. We need to have at least 3,000 ORAC units per day to adequately saturate our tissues with antioxidants to reap the benefits of preventing free radical damage. To put that into perspective, one cup of broccoli yields an ORAC value of about 900 units.
“One serving of NewGreens (10 g) yields an ORAC value of 4,680 units (or 46,800 units per 100 g)! We are pleased to report this and we hope you enjoy the benefits,” Larson concluded.
I just know that these products taste great! Which means I am much more likely to get my five-a-day than ever before.
For more information visit www.purepresriptions.com or call 800.860.9583.