 The post-prandial state is a pro-oxidant state, meaning that after each meal, free radicals are produced as our body assimilates the food, and so we can't just have a bowl of berries in the morning to meet our minimum daily antioxidant needs and call it a day. Each and every meal should contain high antioxidant foods, which, if you remember, means plants. Antioxidant-rich foods originate from the plant kingdom. This is due to the thousands of natural antioxidant compounds found naturally in plant foods. So, for example, consuming fruits, which are high in phenolic-fattenant nutrients, increases the antioxidant capacity of the blood, and when they're consumed with the standard American diet, high-fat, refined carbohydrate, pro-oxidant, pro-inflammatory meals, they may help counterbalance some of the negative effects. Given the content and availability of fat and sugars in the Western diet, regular consumption of phenolic-rich foods, particularly in conjunction with meals, appears to be a prudent strategy to maintain oxidative balance in health. And of all fruits, berries may be the best. So, for example, here's the spike in oxidation caused by a Mediterranean meal of pasta, tomato sauce, olive oil, and fried fish— obviously not enough tomatoes. Add a glass of red wine, which contains berry-fighted nutrients from grapes, and we can bring down the level of oxidation, but not blunt it completely. So, the meal needs even more plans. In this study, they gave people standard breakfast items, resulting in lots of oxidized cholesterol in their bloodstream, one, two, three, four, five, six hours after the meal. But all it took was a cup of strawberries with that same breakfast to at least keep the meal from contributing to further oxidation. Note, though, without the strawberries, where we'd be at lunchtime, right? Let's say we ate a standard American diet at 6 a.m. Then 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, you know, noon. If we didn't eat that cup of strawberries with breakfast, by the time lunch rolls around, we'd already be starting out in a hyper-oxidized state and could just make things worse. Since Western eating patterns include eating multiple meals a day, including snacks, we can only speculate on the level of biological unrest. But at least if we had some berries for breakfast, we'd be starting out at baseline for lunch. This acute protection is likely due to the antioxidant effects of the strawberry phytonutrients. Even better than baseline, how about our meal actually improving our antioxidant status? Here's measuring the antioxidant level of one's bloodstream after a crappy meal. It drops, using up our antioxidant stores, but eat a big bunch of red grapes with the meal, and the antioxidant level of our bloodstream goes up, such that our body's in a positive antioxidant balance for a few hours. Same thing after enough, blueberries. And imagine if these ensuing hours between our next meal, we were sipping green tea or hibiscus, and we'd have this nice antioxidant surplus all day long. What, according to the researchers, are the practical implications? These data provide an interesting perspective for advising individuals on food choices when consuming a moderate to high-fat meal is unavoidable. Unavoidable? So if we're like locked in a fast food joint or something? Well, then they suggest chasing whatever we're forced to eat with some berries. It reminds me of those studies on smokers I talked about, suggesting those who eat those who smoke should eat lots of kale and broccoli to reduce the oxidative damage to their DNA, or they could just not smoke. In a single day, the systemic stress of all that fat in our blood and redox imbalance being in a mild pro-oxidant state after meals may seem trivial. Over time, however, these daily insults can lead to complicated atherosclerosis, contributing to hundreds of thousands of deaths a year.