Tag: antioxidants

What is an ORAC Score?

What is an ORAC Score?When reading about antioxidants, I came across a reference to an ORAC score or an ORAC value. Certain foods have a much higher ORAC score than others. Does this matter? What does an ORAC score or value even mean?

First off, ORAC stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity. In layman’s terms, the definition of an ORAC score is the value given to a food that measures the potential to destroy or absorb free radicals based on 100g of that food.

However, the methods used to measure ORAC scores only measure the antioxidant activity in water-based areas of the body, so the scores might not be completely accurate. After all, the human body is vastly different and infinitely more complex than the test tubes used to calculate ORAC scores.

That’s about all I can wrap my head around without taking some college-level biology courses, so let’s move onto foods and their ORAC scores:

Some of the fruits that have the highest ORAC scores include prunes (14,582), wild blueberries (13,427), cranberries (9,584), blueberries (9,019), and blackberries (7,701). Vegetables with high ORAC scores include small red beans (13,727), red kidney beans (13,259), pinto beans (11,864), artichoke hearts (7,904), and potatos (4,649). Other foods have high ORAC values as well, including raw cocoa beans (7,840) and pecans (5,095).

It’s worth mentioning though that in 2012, the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) removed all ORAC values and scores from its website because there wasn’t enough scientific evidence that proved ORAC has any biological significance.

Still, there are a lot of companies and even more products that tout a high ORAC score. Is it something you should consider above all else? Probably not. Does it hurt to try and choose foods and supplements that have ORAC scores higher than others? Not at all!

If the ORAC score is important to you–and for many people who try to live a healthy lifestyle, it is, despite what the USDA says–you’ll want to shoot for around 5,000 ORAC units per day. If your diet is rich with berries, beans, and legumes, this should be no trouble at all.

What is Peruvian Purple Corn?

What is Peruvian Purple Corn?Recently, Aubrey Marcus from Onnit Labs was on The Joe Rogan Experience. Like he always does, Aubrey was dropping knowledge in between stories about taking hallucinogenic drugs. One thing in particular that piqued my interest was when he was talking about an interesting type of corn that’s found in Peru.

The Peruvian corn he was talking about is unique for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s typically only grown in the Andes region of South America. It also has a unique purple color due to its high levels of anthocyanins. Perhaps most importantly, it’s also a better source of antioxidants than other foods once thought to be the kings of antioxidants, like blueberries and acai berries.

As I mentioned, Peru purple corn is high in anthocyanins. This high level of anthocyanins is what gives the corn its dark purple color. This type of purple corn is also high in phenolics. When foods have high levels of both anthocyanins and phenolics, they have high levels antioxidant activity.

Purple corn has been marketed by some people as being the next miracle food to cure a wide range of things that ail us, much like blueberries and acai berries have been touted in the past. In truth, there are many health benefits of purple corn from Peru, but this corn is just a piece of the puzzle. You can’t start eating purple corn and expect amazing things to happen.

So what does this Peruvian purple corn have to do with Onnit? One of its latest products, EGN: Earth Grown Nutrients Powerfood contains an blend of dark, antioxidant-rich foods which includes Peruvian purple corn along with acai fruit, maqui berries, lucuma, grape skin, and camu.

A quick Google search will reveal a wide range of dubious-looking purple corn extracts, capsules, and juices from companies that look quite shady. But with Onnit, you can be sure that Aubrey has sourced the finest ingredients for his products, including EGN Powerfood. There’s also a three-month money back guarantee as insurance if the product doesn’t live up to its promise. How many of these other companies can promise that? I’m willing to bet none.

Onnit Introduces EGN Powerfood

fOnnit Introduces EGN PowerfoodI first wrote about this product back in May of this year. Aubrey Marcus was on Joey Diaz’s podcast talking about Onnit’s upcoming products and he mentioned something about a new product that would rival Green Vibrance. Seven months later, this product has finally come to fruition, and it’s called Onnit EGN Powerfood.

Back then I had no idea what Green Vibrance was, so I did a little research and found out that it’s a powder that you mix in water or juice. It’s a superdrink that provides you with a wide range of vitamins, nutrients, and minerals that a lot of us don’t get through our daily eating habits. Having the ability to drink some Green Vibrance and get everything you need from one glass is appealing. The problem according to Aubrey is that Green Vibrance doesn’t taste good. At all. If you’re like me, drinking something that tastes disgusting doesn’t make me want to drink it, regardless of how good it is for me.

So what Aubrey set out to do was to create something in the same vein as Green Vibrance, but have it taste good. The result is EGN Powerfood, with the EGN standing for Earth Grown Nutrients, a favorite phrase of Mike Dolce. It works in much the same way as Green Vibrance: you scoop some of the powder into a glass of water or juice and chug it back.

So what’s in this EGN Powerfood? Literally too much stuff for me to type out here, but I’ll break it down into categories: there are an assortment of antioxidants, a variety of greens, a rainbow of fruits and vegetables, a blend of ingredients designed for detoxing, and a blend for digestion to cap it off. It’s honestly a little unbelievable when you look at the list of ingredients and think that somehow they condensed all of this stuff into the plastic jar of EGN Superfood, and that somehow you can obtain the benefits of these ingredients by drinking one glass of the stuff per day.

I’m the type of person who doesn’t like eating many vegetables. I’d rather blend and drink them in a smoothie than eat them with my meals, but I try as best as I can. Knowing that you can mix up a drink and obtain the same benefits is definitely appealing. Now some of that stuff I force myself to eat I can take off the menu and substitute it with EGN Powerfood instead.

For those who care about gluten and GMOs and all those other food-related buzzwords, EGN Powerfood is vegan-friendly, non GMO, and it doesn’t contain any dairy, gluten, or soy.

Learn more about EGN Powerfood and its ingredients and benefits on Onnit’s website.