The antioxidant myth?
Finally, we tuned into a presentation from Lenore Arab, PhD, MSC, professor of internal medicine at UCLA, who said the term antioxidant should probably be banished from tea labels, along with claims about ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) values.
While ORAC tests measure the ability of a compound to scavenge harmful free radicals in a petri dish, she said, they don’t provide any real insight into how that compound will behave in the human body.
Given that many antioxidants in tea are poorly absorbed by the body and then rapidly excreted, she noted, firms should probably stop talking about them in a generic sense and instead focus on establishing which specific phytonutrients and related metabolites actually gain access to appropriate cells in the body to exert biological effects.
Read more about antioxidant claims on tea and tea products HERE and HERE.