What is “wellness”?

The term wellness has become quite fashionable of late, so let’s have a definition:

“Making your body reach its full potential”

In other words eating the wrong food, combined with little exercise can make you flabby and even very ill, whereas eating the right food and exercising properly can add years to your life. Juices from fruit and vegetables can help to maintain a healthy body and keep it in a state of “wellness”.

The Red Revolution - the story of antioxidants

Red drinks are becoming very fashionable; cranberry, pomegranate and blackberry blends are popping up all over the place. Yet, it is the claims which worry me. Have you noticed how much of the food industry, and the drinks sector in particular, seems to have been taken over by mumbo-jumbo? It seems that the movers and shakers appear to specialise in the liberal use of words and concepts which belong more to Harry Potter than to the real world. You know the sort of thing I mean. "Grungeweed extract is known to contain adaptagens, capable of protecting the body against those niggling problems such as bad breath, cardiac arrest and impotence..." Not that such things are blatantly claimed on the labels, but whispered around in bars and at dinner parties and even playgrounds... brilliant marketing.

In a previous existence I was a research scientist, and although it is now many years since I entered a laboratory in anger, I am still unable to listen to such claims without wanting to say (and don't we all?): "That's very interesting - please show me the evidence." And that's when the mumbo-jumbo starts. So in this world of hype rather than reason, of image rather than substance, isn't it good to know that at least one of the buzzwords of today's drinks industry is being revealed increasingly as being at the very heart of our well-being. I'm speaking of antioxidants - probably the nearest we'll ever get to a miracle food.

A brief resume

Here's the story in the tiniest of tiny nutshells: We think life on earth started some 3.5 billion years ago. After its furnace of a birth, the atmosphere contained no free oxygen. So life started in the absence of oxygen - a fact which still surprises me, but which is the first key concept to grasp. The earliest living cells to inhabit the warm seas of that time produced oxygen as a waste by-product and would have regarded it as a dangerous pollutant. For 3.5 billion years the Earth's DNA has battled to keep oxygen in its proper place as a deliverer of energy and not in a too-close-for-comfort relationship with DNA.

Given the opportunity, oxygen will attack and damage, even destroy, the basis of life, DNA. So the second concept to take on board is that our friend oxygen, without whom we cannot survive, is also capable of inflicting serious damage to our DNA which could lead to serious, possibly lethal, problems. Antioxidants protect DNAfrom oxygen damage. Of even greater threat to the DNA's welfare are unstable so-called free radicals. Now here's a term which has sidled its way into our vocabulary without any serious introduction about its meaning; just what are they? Afree radical is a part molecule which has been deprived of an electric charge to which it believes it is entitled. For a nanosecond it has more attitude than premiership footballers after a bad tackle. It hits out at anything in the vicinity. If this happens to be DNA, the hit the molecule receives could destroy or irretrievably damage it. Damage to DNAcould cause uncontrolled proliferation (cancer), premature death of tissues (ageing) or any of a host of ailments. Solar radiation or nicotine are examples of initiators of free radicals, which is why they are recognised as cancer forming agents or carcinogens. For example, sunrays are capable of splitting simple molecules such as water into unstable free radicals. Since the DNA of the skin cells is surrounded by water, it is very vulnerable to the free radicals and the cells are at great risk of growing in an uncontrolled way, forming a skin cancer. If antioxidants are to hand, free radicals will go for them rather than the DNAand thus save the day. Fruits and their juices are important sources of antioxidants.

Better protected

So that's the theory. Eat or drink fruit or their juices and our bodies will be better protected from two major health concerns we face in the western world. Surely not, I hear you say, isn't this really just another stunt to make us buy more fruit juices? Surely we aren't as dependent on juice as you're suggesting; I mean, just look at my cat - never eaten an orange in his life and he's as fit as a flea (poor analogy in the cat's case). It's a good point. Consider this. Human beings and their cousins the tailless monkeys (also known as the Great Apes since we have such a high opinion of ourselves) are almost alone in the animal kingdom in being unable to produce that most well-known antioxidant, vitamin C or ascorbic acid, in their own bodies. Sharks can. Lions can. Tigers can. But gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, funky gibbons and poor old Homo sapiens just do not have the basic ability to manufacture the stuff. Design fault? Possibly, but a much more plausible answer is that we and our ape cousins had a common ancestor which lost its ability to manufacture vitamin C. It's a law we see in nature - if you don't need it, don't make it. Think of the eyeless cavefish or the toothless anteater. Now imagine one of our ancestors sitting in a tree some 6 or 7 million years ago (sorry not to be more exact) surrounded by fruit and leaves stuffed full of antioxidants such as vitamin C. Why make them? Serious waste of time and energy. Just out-source your requirements. Just eat what is surrounding you. That is just great as long as you live in the trees. However, you could be in trouble if you stopped living in trees, no longer able to eat fruit from dawn till dusk. Just like modern humans, in fact.

Basic requirements

Millions of years of our ancestors living in trees honed our bodies to a fruit and shoot dependent diet. Our present lifestyle and diet is changing so rapidly, that it will be difficult for our bodies to keep up and there are some basic requirements which our bodies still cry out for such as antioxdants. Fruit juices supply antioxidants. As we extend our life expectancy, it becomes more important that the cells of which we are made are kept in peak condition. In addition to the famous vitamin C, the group of antioxidants which is of most importance is known as polyphenols. Don't panic, they're genuinely good for you, it's just the name which is hard to swallow. Polyphenols give oranges their orange colour and taste, make redcurrants red and blueberries blue. They look good, taste good and make you live to be 100 (although Iíd better make a quick disclaimer here and say, 'perhaps'). As far as the red colours in fruit juices are concerned, for the sake of this article, we can say there are two types of polyphenols which are red: anthocyanins and lycopenes. They are both hungry to do battle with stray oxygen or free radicals. They are close cousins, anthocyanins being the short molecules, lycopenes being very similar but longer. The shape and size of the molecule gives the fruit juice a particular hue. The bursting berries.

Examples of fruits which are bursting with antioxidants in the form of anthocyanins are blackberry, blueberry, blackcurrant, raspberry, cranberry, red grape... in fact any of the berries. Sometimes the anthocyanins will combine with other parts of the juice (e.g. fructose), as in cranberries or blueberries, to produce an effective antibacterial agent and which can be helpful with urinary problems. Tomatoes are well known as good sources of lycopenes, but pink grapefruit, watermelons and pink guava also get their colour from this particular polyphenol. However, there's more to antioxidants than just protecting DNA. Even before the antioxidants get into our cells, they are having beneficial effects in the blood. Vitamin C is vital in the control of blood clotting (remember the airline scare about deep vein thrombosis?), whilst polyphenols (especially lycopenes) inhibit the production of the dangerous cholesterol (LDLc) and promote the production of 'good' cholesterol (HDLc). In other words they help to prevent the clogging up of arteries which could lead to cardiac arrest. The evidence of our ancient prehistoric vegetarian past runs through our veins like the letters in a stick of Brighton Rock.

Comparing antioxidants