Alan Richman03.01.10
These days, many ingredient and finished product manufacturers like to tout the ORAC scores registered by their favorite antioxidant source. Tempted as buyers may be to just glom onto the item with the highest score, they probably should not. According to various experts, although ORAC is a useful gauge of in vitro antioxidant power, this may not necessarily translate into what is happening in the user’s body.
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Piscataway, NJ-based Sabinsa, for example, acknowledges that ORAC and its offspring create a bewildering array of acronyms for consumers to sort out. Among the various assays now being used are the following: HORAC (hydroxyl radical), NORAC (nitroperoxyl radical), and SOAC (singlet oxygen quenching). Other methods include TRAP (total radical trapping), FRAP (ferric reduction in plasma) and 2, 2’-diphenyl-l-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH). Sabinsa points out that results from various assays do not necessarily correlate. On a hopeful note, it suggests that recent trends in research evaluate cellular antioxidant potential, which researchers believe can be correlated with in vivo activity.
James Perin
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