All you need to know about antioxidants

The reason fruits and vegetables are so important for your health is that they contain antioxidants, which act as the defense system of your body, preventing damage from molecular bombs called free radicals. Here's what else to know about them.

It works like this: in order to breathe, move or eat, your body's cells convert food and oxygen into energy. This chemical reaction releases harmful by-products, the free radicals. Basically, they are highly reactive forms of oxygen that are missing an electron.

Desperate for that missing electron, they steal them from normal cells, damaging the healthy cell and its DNA in the process. This damage eventually contributes to any number of major health problems, including heart disease, memory loss and cancer.

• Antioxidants, however, interfere with this process by giving free radicals one of their own electrons to stabilize them. Or they combine with free radicals to form different, more stable compounds.
• There are also antioxidant enzymes that help free radicals to react with other chemicals to produce safe, instead of toxic, substances.
• Antioxidants, for instance, help to prevent "bad" LDL cholesterol from becoming stickier and forming artery-clogging plaque.
• This is why the health establishment is so insistent on people eating more fresh produce: it provides round-the-clock defences against free-radical damage to your arteries.
• There are many ways to include fresh fruits to your diet, such as adding them to salads or eat them with plain yogourt as a snack.

Of the hundreds of fruits out there, which ones are the best for you? The answer: the ones with the highest ORAC scores. ORAC stands for oxygen radical absorbance capacity, a fancy way of saying, "Which fruits and vegetables pack the greatest antioxidant punch?" The rating system was developed by U.S. scientists. Here are the top 10:

1. Prunes

2. Raisins

3. Blueberries

4. Blackberries

5. Strawberries

6. Raspberries

7. Plums

8. Oranges

9. Red grapes

10. Cherries