Appendix 2
Antioxidant Vitamins in Food

This appendix is not intended to imply that you can get all the antioxidants you need from your diet. Also, I would like | to make the point that vitamins C and E are not, in some mysterious way, 'better' when you get them from natural | foods than from a bottle. Ascorbic acid synthesized in a factory and supplied in a pill is exactly identical to ascorbic acid from broccoli. Neither offers any advantage over the I other. The same goes for tocopherol. In chemistry, a synthetic substance is not a second-grade substitute for the real thing. It is the real thing.

These things being said, there is every reason to try to | ensure that your diet is as high as it reasonably can be in | antioxidant vitamins. These lists will help you to achieve I that.

Vitamin C
Comparative amounts in various foods:

Very high C content
Blackcurrants, sweet red and green peppers, broccoli spears, parsley, kale, hot chili peppers.

High C content
Cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, chives, collard cabbages, mustard greens.

Intermediate C content
Oranges, limes, lemons, strawberries, ripe tomatoes, cantaloupe, chicory, asparagus, artichokes, fennel, radishes, spinach.

Comparatively low C content
All other fruit. Carrots, celery, corn, cucumber, bamboo shoots, garlic, horse radish, potatoes, onions, rhubarb, parsnips, green tomatoes.

Vitamin E
This vitamin is a fat-soluble substance and is widely distributed in foodstuffs. Whatever your diet, it is very hard to get so little that you suffer deficiency of the vitamin. Only people with an absorption disorder are liable to become deficient in vitamin E.

High E sources
The richest sources are seed germ oils such as sunflower oil, palm oil and walnut oil, wheat germ, lettuce and alfalfa.

Other E sources
The vitamin is present in all vegetable oils, vegetable suet, margarine, nuts, peas, beans and other legumes, leafy green vegetables, cereals generally. milk, butter, animal fats, liver, meat, fish, poultry and egg yolk.

Margarine has at least 13 times as much vitamin E as butter, and, weight for weight, a salmon steak contains about 10 times as much vitamin E as a beefsteak. The more polyunsaturated fats you eat, the more vitamin E you will get. Polyunsaturated fats stay liquid at room temperature. In general, they are vegetable rather than animal fats.

Reproduced by permission: Dr. Robert Youngston
The Antioxidant Health Plan, (Copyright Dr. Robert Youngston 1994)
Thorsons 1994, Harper Collins Publishers in the UK.
Available from most health food stores.

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