Time to get healthy, the best antioxidant
L.A. is cluttered with new electronic billboards (as if there aren’t enough traffic hazzars already). And one unusual product being advertised with as much force as the new iPhone is pomegranate juice. Pom makes post-modern-shaped bottles of a variety of pomegranate juices. Pomegranate-blueberry, cranagranate, and pomegranate-agave, though I’m not sure what agave is. A 16 oz. bottle runs around $5. It’s the only juice being so heavily marketed, and the tent pole of the campaign is that pomegranate juice is the best antioxidant out there.
But, it’s not. It’s just the tastiest.
I have nothing against antioxidants. Excess oxidation in the body can lead to inflammation, which causes all sorts of bad health problems. But, there’s a serious difference between cleansing your body using antioxidants, and making yourself feel good by drinking something with a heart on the label.
Take bilberry extract. There is roughly 100 times the antioxidant power in one typical 20mg supplement of bilberry extract than is found in a serving of Pom juice. Bilberry extract is cheap, and it fits right into many multivitamins, but who cares about vitamin information these days?
Pom juice isn’t necessarily unhealthy, it’s just not what it claims to be. It’s like Vitamin Coke. Vitamin coke has 15% of your daily nyacin (B3) and that’s about it. Then again, Vitamin [diet] Coke might be healthier than Pom juice, because it isn’t carrying around an extra 300 calories of sugar the body has to process. And excess calories is one of the causes of excess oxidation in the body. So, in fact, there’s a very good possibility Pom juice is doing the opposite of what it claims.
Then again, it tastes good. And the bottle is so post modern.
