Sometimes it’s hard to follow my own advice. I’ve had a super-stressful day and how am I dealing with it?

In theory I should be rustling up a sprouted seed salad, having just raked my Zen Garden and finished a 45-minute meditation. In truth, I’m trying to ignore Jasper barking at the kiskadees and am wolfing down a box of After Eights. Is this normal? Not particularly,

I haven’t had After Eights since the 80’s (where they belong, right alongside Ferraro Rocher.) And is this good? Well no— sugar robs the body of the nutrients that help to combat stress.

However, what this means is that although I am relentlessly passionate about nutrition, I also have a firm sense of reality - something that will help over the next few months. After two years, it’s time for a change on these pages, so I thought we’d do something more interactive. Every week, I get e-mails and phone calls with nutritional questions that I rarely get time to answer properly. Rather than guessing at the kind of information you want, I thought I’d respond to some genuine queries. So please feel free to email or call me with your questions, and I’ll get back to you with some practical solutions.

Question of the week: Which contains more antioxidants, pomegranates or blueberries? C. MANUEL, PAGET

Good question. Different fruits and vegetables, specifically different colours of fruits and vegetables, contain a variety of antioxidant nutrients. For those that don’t know, antioxidants are nutrients that help to neutralize oxidative damage in the body. If you are still lost, imagine this. When you cut an apple open and expose the flesh to the air, what happens? It quickly turns brown. But if you cover the exposed apple flesh with lemon juice what happens? It remains fresh for much longer.

Well, the reason that an apple turns brown quickly when exposed to the air, is that oxygen is very chemically reactive and produces “free radicals” which accelerate the degenerative and ageing processes. This is of course ironic, as on the other hand, oxygen is the very thing that keeps us alive. However the antioxidant nutrients have the capability to neutralise free radicals.

Plants actually manufacture these nutrients to help protect themselves against a variety of environmental aggressors — everything from solar radiation to harmful microbes — and the good news is, that these nutrients can protect us too.

The antioxidant nutrients include, but are not limited to, vitamins A, C and E, the minerals Selenium, Zinc and Manganese, and other increasingly unpronounceable things such as lycopene, pyenogenols and anthocyanidins. The problem is though, that different fruits and vegetables contain different levels and combinations of these nutrients, so how can you work out which are best overall?

In an attempt to come up with one cumulative yardstick for antioxidant potency, a physician and chemist called Guohua Cao developed the Oxygen Radical Absorption Capacity (ORAC) antioxidant assay. The great thing about the ORAC assay, is that it takes into account all the different nutrients and measures the>total antioxidant capacity of different foods - useful as both foods and supplements present a great variability in their potency.

Research varies, but the general consensus seems to be that we should aim for an overall ORAC intake of 6,000 units daily. Fortunately, according to the United States Department of Agriculture and their Human Nutrition Research Centre on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, 100g of blueberries will provide you with 2,400 ORAC units. Add in a few other ORAC-rich foods (such as prunes, blackberries, spinach and broccoli) and it’s easy to hit your target.

Unfortunately, although over 100 foods have now been tested, Tufts haven’t yet produced an official ORAC figure for pomegranates. The Goji Health website does list pomegranates as having 3,307 ORAC units per 100g - but it’s hard to tell where this figure came from.

If it is accurate, then pomegranates could be considered to be more antioxidant rich than blueberries. However, as blueberries have the legitimate ORAC rating, they are probably the winner here - but only in the absence of an official statistic for pomegranates.

Unsurprisingly, the Goji website touts Goji berries as being the most ORAC-rich of all. Whilst this may be true (and we await official stats) please be aware that health food companies are currently capitalising on the ORAC rating and in some instances are distorting the data to suit their purposes.

For example, it’s sometimes unclear if the comparison of ORAC units takes wet or dry weight into account. So, whilst a raisin has the same antioxidant capability as a grape, because a grape has a higher water content, the grapes appear to have less ORACs when compared to the same weight of raisins.

Ultimately, what does this mean? The consensus from the scientific journals seems to be this. Whilst ORACs are really useful (and they have certainly officially identified blueberries, spinach, blackberries, strawberries, broccoli, kale and prunes as especially ORAC rich) the ORAC measure can only be used as a guide.

Keep in mind that seasonality, chemical exposure and storage can also affect ORAC levels, so it gets complicated! Instead, to maximise your antioxidant intake, follow these three simple rules:

1. Eat 5-9 servings of fruit and vegetables daily

2. Eat a variety of different colours. Foods with deep colours are especially antioxidant rich e.g. berries, broccoli and yellow peppers

3. Eat your fruit and veg raw, steamed or only lightly cooked in order to preserve the nutrient content. The advice given in this article is not intended to replace medical advice, but to complement it. Always consult your GP if you have any health concerns. Catherine Burns is a fully qualified Nutritional Therapist. She can be contacted at 291 4725 or clinicalnutrition@gmail.com