TKF Science Writing

I am currently writing an article on oxidation and free radicals and I thought I’d go over the basics for those interested in how it relates to food. I’ll give you one guess as to what element oxidation refers to. If you guessed boron that would be incorrect. The correct answer is of course oxygen. Free radicals and oxygen go hand in hand in biological reactions.

To give you a simple example of oxidation, take an apple and slice it in half. Leave it on the counter for a few minutes, watch it turn brown, and you have just witnessed the phenomenon of oxidation. By breaking the skin on an apple, you have just exposed the it’s cells to oxygen and have seen first hand the destruction of those cells.

Free radicals are compounds that are highly reactive due to the presence of a lone pair of electrons. Electrons do not enjoy being in pairs because of the instability factor. Much like the economy today, nothing really likes to be unstable. The same goes for the natural world. I harken back to the movie Titanic where a member of the crew shoots a gun in the air and says “maintain order here”. The same goes for electrons in that they want to be stable. Okay, movie tangent over, back to the food thing.

So, at a molecular level, we have electrons wanting to be in pairs when in walks these free radical types whose electrons have no dance partner or pair and are very unstable. What do they do? They walk around the dance floor like an overzealous teenage boy looking to pick up a dance partner. It could be the girl against the wall, the girl on the floor, the chaperone, or your buddies date. Free radicals don’t care, they just wants to become stable so they will grab anybody.

When this free radical steals someone else’s date, they have just created another free radical who is looking for a dance partner and the whole process starts again. The next thing you know the whole dance floor (our cells) becomes saturated with free radicals and chaos ensues. This chaos leads to mutated cells and loss of proper cell functioning.

Transfer that metaphor to your diet and cooking habits. Examples of the stag free radical stealing dates are:

cigarettes
smog
intense exercise
stress
alcohol
charred food
pesticides
UV light

In walks the savior of the dance known as anti-oxidants. They come in and help clear everything up. They protect against the free radicals by bonding with them. Essentially, they share their date (electron) with the free radical. Anti-oxidants are found in foods that contain:

Beta-carotene (carrots, sweet potatoes, cantaloupes, squash, mangoes)

Lutein - green leafy vegetables such as spinach, collard greens, and kale

Lycopene - tomatoes, watermelon, guava, papaya, apricots, pink grapefruits

Vitamin A - sweet potatoes and carrots

Vitamin C - apples, oranges, pineapples, strawberries, blueberries

Vitamin E - wheat germ, some oils (corn, safflower, soybean), green leafy vegetables, whole grains, avocadoes, almonds, olives, nuts, broccoli

If you start to include these anti-oxidants in your diet perhaps you won’t ever get stood up on the dance flood again. At least your dance floor (your cells) will be better protected from those lurking free radicals.