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The British Journal of Nutrition. Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Annals of Internal Medicine. Clinical Nutrition. They protect your body from potentially harmful molecules known as free radicals, which can accumulate and promote oxidative stress.

Oxidative stress raises the risk of heart disease, cancers, type 2 diabetes, and many other chronic conditions. Eating a diet rich in antioxidants can help neutralize free radicals and reduce the risk of these chronic diseases.

By eating a wide variety of the foods in this article, you can boost your blood levels of antioxidants and reap their many health benefits. Our experts continually monitor the health and wellness space, and we update our articles when new information becomes available.

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How Well Do You Sleep? Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Nutrition Evidence Based 14 Healthy Foods High in Antioxidants. Medically reviewed by Katherine Marengo LDN, R.

Dark chocolate Pecans Blueberries Strawberries Artichokes Goji berries Raspberries Kale Red cabbage Beans Beets Spinach Spices Okra FAQs Bottom line Many nutrient-dense foods are rich in antioxidants, including certain types of berries, nuts, and vegetables.

Dark chocolate. Goji berries. Red cabbage. Spices and herbs. Frequently asked questions. The bottom line.

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It also found that eating raw pecans helps lower the blood levels of oxidized LDL cholesterol, which may mean that these nuts help prevent heart disease.

Strawberries are rich in antioxidants, vitamins , and minerals. Strawberries owe their red color to anthocyanins, which have antioxidant powers. A review showed that taking anthocyanin supplements reduced the levels of LDL cholesterol in participants with high cholesterol.

By lowering LDL cholesterol levels, anthocyanins may help prevent heart disease. Although strawberries are an ingredient in some baked goods, these products are rarely healthful and are not a good choice for people trying to lose weight. Red cabbage, like strawberries and red kale , contains anthocyanins.

In addition to giving the vegetable its red color, this group of antioxidants helps promote heart health, prevent cancer, and reduce inflammation. According to one study , anthocyanins have the following health benefits:. However, more research is still necessary to determine the health effects of eating red cabbage.

A person can eat red cabbage as part of a salad or as a cooked vegetable. Raspberries are an excellent source of many antioxidants. They also contain manganese, vitamin C , and dietary fiber. Evidence suggests that the antioxidants present in raspberries may help destroy certain cancer cells.

For example, in one laboratory study , researchers found that the antioxidants and some other compounds in raspberries helped kill breast, colon, and stomach cancer cells in a test tube.

A more recent review of studies showed that the compounds in black raspberries might slow the progression of cancerous tumors. However, most of the research on raspberries has involved experiments in test tubes. Consequently, researchers need to carry out studies involving people to judge the effectiveness of eating raspberries in preventing disease.

Beans are an excellent source of protein and dietary fiber. Some beans, such as pinto beans, are also high in antioxidants. Pinto beans contain a plant flavonoid called kaempferol, which may help suppress cancer cell growth and reduce inflammation. Several studies link kaempferol to the suppression of specific cancers, including:.

Despite these promising studies, researchers do not know much about the antioxidant effect of kaempferol in humans.

To date, they have primarily carried out studies in animals and test tubes. However, as beans have several potential health benefits, it is a good idea for people to include them as part of their regular diet.

Purple and red grape varieties contain vitamin C, selenium , and antioxidants. Two of the antioxidants that occur in grapes, namely anthocyanin and proanthocyanin, may help protect a person from heart disease or cancer. However, there is a need for additional research to show the exact effects that eating grapes has on heart health and cancer risk.

Spinach is a green, leafy vegetable full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. It is low in calories, making it an excellent choice as an addition to salads and entrees. Zeaxanthin and lutein are two of the antioxidants in spinach that may promote eye health.

They help prevent damage from ultraviolet UV rays and other harmful light waves. A review of studies on lutein and zeaxanthin noted that lots of studies have investigated their role in age-related macular degeneration. The authors also suggested how people could get more of these antioxidants in their diets, naming dark leafy greens, eggs, and pistachios as sources.

Beets are vegetables that contain antioxidants belonging to a class of pigments called betalains. Betalains may help prevent colon cancer and digestive issues. Beets are also a source of dietary fiber, iron, folate , and potassium.

These substances may help with suppressing inflammation. One review noted that betalains show promise for reducing free radicals and helping prevent cancer.

However, research has not yet determined the effectiveness of eating beets for these benefits.

Green tea camellia sinensis : A review of its phytochemistry, pharmacology, and toxicology. Klepacka J, Tonska E, Rafalowski R, Czarnowska-Kujawska M, et al.

Tea as a source of biologically active compounds in the human diet. Published online Mar 9. Kozarski M, Klaus A, Jakovljevic D, Todorovic J, et al. Antioxidants of edible mushrooms.

Elsayed EA, El Enshasy H, Wadaan MAM, Aziz R. Mushrooms: A Potential Natural Source of Anti-Inflammatory Compounds for Medical Applications. Mediators Inflamm. Published online Nov Muszynska B, Grzywacz-Kisielewska A, Kała K, Gdula-Argasińska J. Anti-inflammatory properties of edible mushrooms: A review.

Food Chem. Epub Sep Mushrooms, portabella, raw. Cardwell G, Bornman JF, James AP, Black LJ. A review of mushrooms as a potential source of dietary vitamin D. Nuts: natural pleiotropic nutraceuticals.

Published online Sep Aune D. Plant foods, antioxidant biomarkers, and the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality: A review of the evidence. Nuts: Natural Pleiotropic Nutraceuticals.

Gorzynik-Debicka M, Przychodzen P, Cappello F, Kuban-Jankowska A, et al. Potential health benefits of olive oil and plant polyphenols.

Published online Feb Leri M, Scuto M, Ontario ML, Calabrese V, et al. Healthy Effects of Plant Polyphenols: Molecular Mechanisms. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. What is metabolic syndrome? Dietary fats explained. Reddy P, Jialal I.

Biochemistry, Fat Soluble Vitamins. In: StatPearls. StatPearls Publishing; Lozano-Castellón J, Vallverdú-Queralt A, Rinaldi de Alvarenga JF, Illán M.

Domestic Sautéing with EVOO: Change in the Phenolic Profile. Antioxidants Basel. Published online Jan Hellman H, Goyer A, Navarre DA. Antioxidants in potatoes: A functional view on one of the major food crops worldwide. Potato, baked, NFS. Ciudad-Mulero M, Matallana-González MC, Camara M, Fernández-Ruiz V, et al.

Antioxidant phytochemicals in pulses and their relation to human health: a review. Curr Pharm Des. Singh N. Pulses: an overview. J Food Sci Technol. Lentils, mature seeds, cooked, boiled, without salt.

Przybylska S, Tokarczyk G. Lycopene in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. Collins EJ, Bowyer C, Tsouza A. Chopra M. Tomatoes: An extensive review of the associated health impacts of tomatoes and factors that can affect their cultivation. Biology Basel. Published online Feb 4. Tomato products, canned, sauce.

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Connect with her on Instagram and Facebook, or visit www. health's editorial guidelines. Medically reviewed by Elizabeth Barnes, RDN. One review of 10 studies involving close to participants showed that dark chocolate helps reduce both upper and lower blood pressure measurements.

The authors noted, however, that future research needs to determine how much dark chocolate a person should eat for these benefits and investigate its effect on other metabolic conditions.

Artichokes provide lots of nutrients and antioxidants. One study looking at the medicinal use of artichokes over time noted that artichoke consumption can be good for gut, liver, and heart health.

Another study showed that chemicals in artichokes had an antioxidant effect on LDL cholesterol in laboratory tests. How people prepare artichokes makes a difference to their antioxidant levels. One study compared boiling, frying, and steaming to see how each affected the antioxidant levels.

The results showed that steaming increased the effectiveness of the antioxidants by 15 times while boiling increased it eightfold. Researchers believe the reason for this is that boiling and steaming break down the cell walls, making the antioxidants more accessible.

One study showed that the body can absorb antioxidants from pecans, increasing their levels in the blood. It also found that eating raw pecans helps lower the blood levels of oxidized LDL cholesterol, which may mean that these nuts help prevent heart disease.

Strawberries are rich in antioxidants, vitamins , and minerals. Strawberries owe their red color to anthocyanins, which have antioxidant powers. A review showed that taking anthocyanin supplements reduced the levels of LDL cholesterol in participants with high cholesterol.

By lowering LDL cholesterol levels, anthocyanins may help prevent heart disease. Although strawberries are an ingredient in some baked goods, these products are rarely healthful and are not a good choice for people trying to lose weight. Red cabbage, like strawberries and red kale , contains anthocyanins.

In addition to giving the vegetable its red color, this group of antioxidants helps promote heart health, prevent cancer, and reduce inflammation. According to one study , anthocyanins have the following health benefits:.

However, more research is still necessary to determine the health effects of eating red cabbage. A person can eat red cabbage as part of a salad or as a cooked vegetable. Raspberries are an excellent source of many antioxidants.

They also contain manganese, vitamin C , and dietary fiber. Evidence suggests that the antioxidants present in raspberries may help destroy certain cancer cells. For example, in one laboratory study , researchers found that the antioxidants and some other compounds in raspberries helped kill breast, colon, and stomach cancer cells in a test tube.

A more recent review of studies showed that the compounds in black raspberries might slow the progression of cancerous tumors. However, most of the research on raspberries has involved experiments in test tubes.

Consequently, researchers need to carry out studies involving people to judge the effectiveness of eating raspberries in preventing disease.

Beans are an excellent source of protein and dietary fiber. Some beans, such as pinto beans, are also high in antioxidants. Pinto beans contain a plant flavonoid called kaempferol, which may help suppress cancer cell growth and reduce inflammation.

Several studies link kaempferol to the suppression of specific cancers, including:. Despite these promising studies, researchers do not know much about the antioxidant effect of kaempferol in humans.

To date, they have primarily carried out studies in animals and test tubes. However, as beans have several potential health benefits, it is a good idea for people to include them as part of their regular diet. Purple and red grape varieties contain vitamin C, selenium , and antioxidants.

Two of the antioxidants that occur in grapes, namely anthocyanin and proanthocyanin, may help protect a person from heart disease or cancer.

However, there is a need for additional research to show the exact effects that eating grapes has on heart health and cancer risk.

Spinach is a green, leafy vegetable full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. It is low in calories, making it an excellent choice as an addition to salads and entrees.

Unsaturated fats can be highly susceptible to oxidation, causing rancidification. Thus, these foods are rarely preserved by drying; instead, they are preserved by smoking , salting , or fermenting.

Even less fatty foods such as fruits are sprayed with sulfurous antioxidants prior to air drying. Metals catalyse oxidation. Some fatty foods such as olive oil are partially protected from oxidation by their natural content of antioxidants.

Fatty foods are sensitive to photooxidation, [17] which forms hydroperoxides by oxidizing unsaturated fatty acids and ester.

These molecules undergo free radical chain reactions, but antioxidants inhibit them by preventing the oxidation processes. Antioxidant stabilizers are also added to fat-based cosmetics such as lipstick and moisturizers to prevent rancidity.

For example, phenolic antioxidants such as stilbenes , flavonoids , and hydroxycinnamic acid strongly absorb UV radiation due to the presence of chromophores. They reduce oxidative stress from sun exposure by absorbing UV light. Antioxidants may be added to industrial products, such as stabilizers in fuels and additives in lubricants , to prevent oxidation and polymerization that leads to the formation of engine-fouling residues.

Antioxidant polymer stabilizers are widely used to prevent the degradation of polymers , such as rubbers, plastics and adhesives , that causes a loss of strength and flexibility in these materials. They can be protected by antiozonants. Oxidation can be accelerated by UV radiation in natural sunlight to cause photo-oxidation.

Various specialised light stabilisers, such as HALS may be added to plastics to prevent this. Synthetic phenolic [24] and aminic [25] antioxidants are increasingly being identified as potential human and environmental health hazards. Synthetic phenolic antioxidants SPAs and aminic antioxidants have potential human and environmental health hazards.

SPAs are common in indoor dust, small air particles, sediment, sewage, river water and wastewater. BHT can cause hepatotoxicity and damage to the endocrine system and may increase tumor development rates due to 1,1-dimethylhydrazine. Phenolic antioxidants have low biodegradability, but they do not have severe toxicity toward aquatic organisms at low concentrations.

Another type of antioxidant, diphenylamine DPA , is commonly used in the production of commercial, industrial lubricants and rubber products and it also acts as a supplement for automotive engine oils.

The vast majority of complex life on Earth requires oxygen for its metabolism, but this same oxygen is a highly reactive element that can damage living organisms.

Thus, ideally, antioxidant systems do not remove oxidants entirely, but maintain them at some optimum concentration. This species is produced from hydrogen peroxide in metal-catalyzed redox reactions such as the Fenton reaction.

The use of oxygen as part of the process for generating metabolic energy produces reactive oxygen species. This unstable intermediate can lead to electron "leakage", when electrons jump directly to oxygen and form the superoxide anion, instead of moving through the normal series of well-controlled reactions of the electron transport chain.

Physiological antioxidants are classified into two broad divisions, depending on whether they are soluble in water hydrophilic or in lipids lipophilic. In general, water-soluble antioxidants react with oxidants in the cell cytosol and the blood plasma , while lipid-soluble antioxidants protect cell membranes from lipid peroxidation.

Some antioxidants are only found in a few organisms, and can be pathogens or virulence factors. The interactions between these different antioxidants may be synergistic and interdependent. Some compounds contribute to antioxidant defense by chelating transition metals and preventing them from catalyzing the production of free radicals in the cell.

The ability to sequester iron for iron-binding proteins , such as transferrin and ferritin , is one such function.

See also selenium in biology and zinc in biology. retinol vitamin A : 1—3 [60]. Uric acid has the highest concentration of any blood antioxidant [58] and provides over half of the total antioxidant capacity of human serum.

Ascorbic acid or vitamin C , an oxidation-reduction redox catalyst found in both animals and plants, [71] can reduce, and thereby neutralize, reactive oxygen species such as hydrogen peroxide. Glutathione has antioxidant properties since the thiol group in its cysteine moiety is a reducing agent and can be reversibly oxidized and reduced.

In cells, glutathione is maintained in the reduced form by the enzyme glutathione reductase and in turn reduces other metabolites and enzyme systems, such as ascorbate in the glutathione-ascorbate cycle , glutathione peroxidases and glutaredoxins , as well as reacting directly with oxidants.

Vitamin E is the collective name for a set of eight related tocopherols and tocotrienols , which are fat-soluble vitamins with antioxidant properties. It has been claimed that the α-tocopherol form is the most important lipid-soluble antioxidant, and that it protects membranes from oxidation by reacting with lipid radicals produced in the lipid peroxidation chain reaction.

This reaction produces oxidised α-tocopheroxyl radicals that can be recycled back to the active reduced form through reduction by other antioxidants, such as ascorbate, retinol or ubiquinol. However, the roles and importance of the various forms of vitamin E are presently unclear, [87] [88] and it has even been suggested that the most important function of α-tocopherol is as a signaling molecule , with this molecule having no significant role in antioxidant metabolism.

Antioxidants that are reducing agents can also act as pro-oxidants. For example, vitamin C has antioxidant activity when it reduces oxidizing substances such as hydrogen peroxide; [92] however, it will also reduce metal ions such as iron and copper [93] that generate free radicals through the Fenton reaction.

With the presence of transition metals, there are low concentrations of ascorbic acid that can act as a radical scavenger in the Fenton reaction. The relative importance of the antioxidant and pro-oxidant activities of antioxidants is an area of current research, but vitamin C, which exerts its effects as a vitamin by oxidizing polypeptides, appears to have a mostly antioxidant action in the human body.

As with the chemical antioxidants, cells are protected against oxidative stress by an interacting network of antioxidant enzymes.

This detoxification pathway is the result of multiple enzymes, with superoxide dismutases catalysing the first step and then catalases and various peroxidases removing hydrogen peroxide. As with antioxidant metabolites, the contributions of these enzymes to antioxidant defenses can be hard to separate from one another, but the generation of transgenic mice lacking just one antioxidant enzyme can be informative.

Superoxide dismutases SODs are a class of closely related enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of the superoxide anion into oxygen and hydrogen peroxide. Catalases are enzymes that catalyse the conversion of hydrogen peroxide to water and oxygen, using either an iron or manganese cofactor.

Here, its cofactor is oxidised by one molecule of hydrogen peroxide and then regenerated by transferring the bound oxygen to a second molecule of substrate. Peroxiredoxins are peroxidases that catalyze the reduction of hydrogen peroxide, organic hydroperoxides , as well as peroxynitrite.

The thioredoxin system contains the k Da protein thioredoxin and its companion thioredoxin reductase. Plants, such as Arabidopsis thaliana , have a particularly great diversity of isoforms.

In its active state, thioredoxin acts as an efficient reducing agent, scavenging reactive oxygen species and maintaining other proteins in their reduced state.

The glutathione system includes glutathione, glutathione reductase , glutathione peroxidases , and glutathione S -transferases. There are at least four different glutathione peroxidase isozymes in animals.

Surprisingly, glutathione peroxidase 1 is dispensable, as mice lacking this enzyme have normal lifespans, [] but they are hypersensitive to induced oxidative stress. The dietary antioxidant vitamins A, C, and E are essential and required in specific daily amounts to prevent diseases. Common pharmaceuticals and supplements with antioxidant properties may interfere with the efficacy of certain anticancer medication and radiation therapy.

Radiation therapy induce oxidative stress that damages essential components of cancer cells, such as proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids that comprise cell membranes. Relatively strong reducing acids can have antinutrient effects by binding to dietary minerals such as iron and zinc in the gastrointestinal tract and preventing them from being absorbed.

However, germination, soaking, or microbial fermentation are all household strategies that reduce the phytate and polyphenol content of unrefined cereal. Increases in Fe, Zn and Ca absorption have been reported in adults fed dephytinized cereals compared with cereals containing their native phytate.

High doses of some antioxidants may have harmful long-term effects. The Beta-Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial CARET study of lung cancer patients found that smokers given supplements containing beta-carotene and vitamin A had increased rates of lung cancer.

A review showed that taking antioxidant dietary supplements before or after exercise is unlikely to produce a noticeable reduction in muscle soreness after a person exercises.

Antioxidant vitamins are found in vegetables, fruits, eggs, legumes and nuts. Vitamins A, C, and E can be destroyed by long-term storage or prolonged cooking.

Other antioxidants are not obtained from the diet, but instead are made in the body. For example, ubiquinol coenzyme Q is poorly absorbed from the gut and is made through the mevalonate pathway. As any glutathione in the gut is broken down to free cysteine, glycine and glutamic acid before being absorbed, even large oral intake has little effect on the concentration of glutathione in the body.

Measurement of polyphenol and carotenoid content in food is not a straightforward process, as antioxidants collectively are a diverse group of compounds with different reactivities to various reactive oxygen species.

In food science analyses in vitro, the oxygen radical absorbance capacity ORAC was once an industry standard for estimating antioxidant strength of whole foods, juices and food additives, mainly from the presence of polyphenols. Alternative in vitro measurements of antioxidant content in foods — also based on the presence of polyphenols — include the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent , and the Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity assay.

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Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons. Compound that inhibits the oxidation of other molecules. See also: E number § E—E antioxidants, acidity regulators. Further information: Oxidative stress. Further information: Pro-oxidant.