What is Antioxidant?

What is an antioxidant? We are hearing this particular word all the time so, what is it? It can be an alien word for some and for others it’s common. This sharing is only to give a general understanding of what is an ‘ANTIOXIDANT’. There are so many scientific terms that are used to explain this but I’ll try to share it in a simple way where the scientific terms are not being elaborated.

So when your kids don’t want to eat fruits or vegetables you can tell them why we need to eat them:

Antioxidants are abundant in all fruits, vegetables, whole grains, herbs, and spices. You get them in minimum amount /none in any carbonated drinks, processed foods, or overcooked food.

How they are effective to us?

Antioxidants are the ‘soldiers’ who protect our body cells from getting destroyed by the free radicals known as our ‘enemies’. Our soldiers are colorful soldiers from every colourful food. You can see this from every vegetable, fruit, spices, grains, and herbs. Who are these ‘enemies’ or ‘free radicals’? They can be produced internally by our own body through the metabolic process during digestion with enzymic reaction, inflammation, during the excessive amount of exercise, viral or non viral infection, toxins in our body, trauma by injuries, external factors such as pollution, radiation, cigarettes smoke, certain drugs and pesticides. We can’t 100 % eliminate our enemies because they are part of our body system. These enemies are roaming free in our bodies every day in our entire lifetime. The soldiers must be balanced out to the same level as the enemies. If the enemies have a greater number than the soldiers, our body will enter a state called ‘oxidative stress’ where they can destroy and alter our cells, proteins, lipids, DNA, trigger some diseases and accelerate ageing.

Ways to Increase our Antioxidants

So what we can do? Eating food high in soldiers will help to balance your enemies. This is why eating high antioxidant(soldiers) foods are very important in our daily lifestyle. So by eating at least 5 to 6 servings of rainbow-coloured foods daily will not only attack the enemies but keeps our cells and tissues protected while shielding them from any other future damages by the enemies and keeping it healthy.

We can choose how to be healthy by our own simple choices of our food. Prevention is better than the cure so making sure having plenty of colorful food could contribute to our health to be more disease-free and being young. Try to eat RAW fruits and vegetables since its high in antioxidants, vitamins, and enzymes that are needed to nourish our body and to function properly.Synthetic antioxidants aren’t as beneficial as our natural food antioxidants. Eating nature’s food are the best way to get the antioxidants and utilised by our body.

I hope my explanation is good enough to understand what is an antioxidant. Have a colourful Antioxidant day!

Thanks to ja ma for sharing their work on Unsplash.

Thanks to Vanesa conunaese for sharing their work on Unsplash.

Thanks to Sharon Pittaway for sharing their work on Unsplash