ORAC Scores
An Example Using The Gold Standard Juice Plus®

There are many functions of phytonutrients. Some known functions include:

• facilitate cell-to-cell communication
• modify cellular receptor uptake of hormones
• convert to vitamin A
• repair DNA damage from toxic exposure
• detoxify carcinogens through the activation of the cytochrome P450 and Phase II liver enzyme systems
• serve as antioxidants to help prevent various forms of cancer
• cause apoptosis (cell death) in cancer cells
• enhance immune response
• help prevent cardiovascular disease
• help prevent osteoporosis
• help prevent macular degeneration and cataracts.

Of these, the easiest to measure is the ability to absorb free radicals. ORAC stands for “Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity”. It represents the ability of a substance to absorb or quench free radicals; or more specifically, the peroxyl radical, a common reactive oxygen species in the body, as compared to Vitamin E. When evaluating an ORAC score, you want to keep a few things in mind:

• When synthetic vitamins are added to a nutritional supplement, they will synthetically “spike” the ORAC score and shouldn’t be given as much credibility as phytonutrient formulas made only from fruits, vegetables, herbs, and other plant sources.
• Brunswick Labs is the current independent “standard” in the industry. Reputable supplements will give their ORAC scores based on Brunswick Labs testing and should make available to you a copy of the Brunswick Labs report. ORAC testing from other companies may be less reliable.
• Because fruit, vegetable, and plant harvests vary seasonally and by location and due to soil changes, etc. supplement companies should make BrunswickLabs reports available to consumers for each batch of product produced and not “cherry pick” the results they choose to publish.
• ORAC testing is accurate within a 15% deviation.
• And, ***most importantly,*** understand that the ORAC score per serving is equal to the per gram strength times the grams per serving. If the serving size is one gram, than the total ORAC score does not need to be multiplied. If, however, the serving size is 10 grams, the ORAC must be multiplied by 10.

EXAMPLES:

In the above example, although each gram of Juice Plus® is almost half the ORAC strength of NanoGreens10, the much larger serving size of NanoGreens10 significantly raises the ORAC score per serving to more than 9 times that of the combined Juice Plus® scores. It should be noted, however, that there will be variances from batch to batch and the next batch of either product can be weaker or stronger than those referenced above.

Buy NanoGreens10

References Lot# N04090783C Lab ID 05-1139 total ORAC of 228 per gram comes from 211µmoleTE/g hydrophilic and 17 µmoleTE/g lipophilic.
Lot# N04090784C Lab ID 05-1140 total ORAC of 281per gram comes from 271µmoleTE/g hydrophilic and 10 µmoleTE/g lipophilic.
Lot# 12034-2 Lab ID 05-2814 total ORAC of 589 per gram comes from 482 µmoleTE/g hydrophilic and 107 µmoleTE/g lipophilic.