Blueberries were considered a rare delicacy served with cream or cereal for special breakfasts several decades ago. They didn’t achieve super-food status until the ORAC system of measuring antioxidant activity was created by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) a couple of decades ago.
ORAC stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, a lab measurement of the ability of a food or any other substance to quench oxygen free radicals. Even normal metabolic functions create free radicals, which are unstable atoms or molecules that can strip electrons from other molecules, causing chain reactions of oxidative damage in blood and tissue.
