Fruits and vegetables offer profound health benefits—and recent research shows they're even more powerful than we realized. Scientists at Spain's University of Granada developed Global Antioxidant Response (GAR), a comprehensive method that evaluates the full antioxidant capacity of foods.
Conventional approaches only measured the "liquid fraction" absorbed in the small intestine. José Ángel Rufián-Henares, lead author of the study in Food Chemistry, notes: "The problem is that the antioxidant activity of the solid fraction (the fibers) is not taken into account, because it is assumed that it is not beneficial. However, this insoluble fraction arrives in the large intestine and the intestinal flora can also ferment it to extract even more antioxidant substances."
This innovative GAR method fully analyzes foods, revealing citrus fruits (fresh or juiced) have antioxidant levels up to 10 times higher than before detected. Researchers found 70% of lemons', grapefruits', and oranges' activity comes from their fibers.
These findings highlight citrus as vitamin-rich delights with strong anti-cancer potential and metabolism-boosting effects.
