![]() ![]() ![]() Those data confirmed that the antioxidant defense of the blood increased steadily with the increasing juice intake. During the last month of the experiment, daily juice intake increased to three glasses.īefore the trial and at the end of each month, the scientists ran a series of tests on the blood of each participant. During the second month, each recruit drank two glasses daily. For the first month, each person drank a daily 8-ounce glass of either the sugared or surgarfree cranberry-juice cocktail. In a follow-up trial, Vinson’s team put 20 adults, mostly middle age and all with moderately elevated, unhealthy total-blood-cholesterol concentrations, on a cranberry-juice regimen. This time, he notes, “we had a good antioxidant effect for the whole 7 hours, even after that blast of high-fructose corn syrup and bagel at lunch.” On another day, he repeated the tests, this time giving each volunteer an 8-ounce glass of the sugar-sweetened cranberry juice cocktail. After a bagel and soft drink at lunchtime, the assays continued and showed that the potentially unhealthy pro-oxidant effect lasted a total of 7 hours, Vinson told Science News Online. To Vinson’s surprise, the blood actually fostered oxidation. Over the next 4 hours, the researchers periodically sampled the volunteers’ blood and tested its ability to quash oxidants. To evaluate whether it was the cranberry juice or the sugar and vitamin C in the cocktail that provided any benefit in the new study, the Scranton chemists offered just an 8-ounce glass of the sugar water and the vitamin to 10 men and women as a breakfast drink. With funding and cranberries supplied by the Cranberry Institute, he then investigated antioxidants delivered to the blood by juice. Yet even in this cocktail form, Vinson found, 27 percent cranberry juice still ranked second only to pure grape juice in its ability to defuse oxidants. However, because cranberries are so tart, their juice has to be diluted and sweetened to be palatable. ![]() When the chemists investigated pure cranberry juice, they found its antioxidant punch exceeded by 50 percent the potency of its next closest juice competitor, grape juice. Several of cranberry’s polyphenol antioxidants are procyanidins, the same family of pigments that make cherries red. ![]() Overall, fruits surpassed the veggies, “and cranberries had more antioxidants than any other fruit,” Vinson observes. In earlier studies, the Scranton team surveyed the antioxidant potential of several fruits and vegetables. However, epidemiological studies by others have correlated HDL-cholesterol increases of this magnitude with about a 40 percent drop in heart-disease risk, Vinson notes. The juice didn’t affect low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or triglycerides, which are other fatty substances in the blood. Twelve chose the low-cal juice, which was sweetened solely with a sugar-free compound.ĭrinking cranberry juice three times a day over the course of a month increased all the volunteers’ blood concentration of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol–the so-called good cholesterol–by 10 percent. He offered his recruits the type available in stores, which is heavily sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup and supplemented with extra vitamin C, or a low-calorie alternative that the Scranton scientists concocted daily from pure juice. In his latest study, Vinson and his colleagues provided 20 men and women 8-ounce servings of cranberry juice cocktail, which contains 27 percent juice. Indeed, a large number of disorders associated with aging–including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and several types of dementia–have been linked to damage caused by a slow and unremitting onslaught of oxidants. As antioxidants, these compounds quash the damage that natural oxidants can do in the body. Many plant-based foods, especially the colorful ones, contain large quantities of polyphenols. ![]()
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