So-called ‘super foods’ have become ever more popular in our increasingly health-conscious society. They include green tea, cranberries, pomegranates and broccoli. So what makes them so super?
Many of these foods owe their title to a high antioxidant content. Antioxidants are a group of chemicals that protect the body’s cells from the damaging effects of free radical chain reactions. Free radicals are unstable atoms or molecules that contain an unpaired electron. This makes them very reactive, as they interact with other molecules to either gain another electron or to lose the lone electron. Once a free radical has reacted with another molecule, the molecule itself becomes a free and so the chain reaction continues, damaging proteins and DNA along the way. radical,
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