ORAC stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, and is a laboratory test which is designed to quantify the amount of antioxidant capacity of a food.
ORAC is the most popularly used value in food antioxidant discussions, although there are other laboratory tests which can also be utilized. ORAC assessment of not only foods, but also spices and berries have been assessed.
Brief History Of ORAC
ORAC database was originally developed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
They had noted that several health conditions including cancers, heart disease, Parkinson Disease, and Alzheimer Disease could be attributed in some associated manner to oxidative stress, and that work and quantification in dietary antioxidants could be helpful in users working on these and other conditions (Source: Haytowitz and Bhagwat, 2010).
USDA first published a database of antioxidant activity using ORAC methodology in 2007 containing 277 foods.
It’s Gone. What Happened To The ORAC Database?
USDA withdrew the online database in May of 2012 (Schauss, 2012), due to concerns at that time regarding lack of scientific evidence to compare ORAC and biological significance, the commercial utilization with unvetted health claims using ORAC numbers as the source of quantifying one supplement vs another, and concerns regarding companies performing adding artificial additives to their supplement in order to increase their ORAC score.
So, Is ORAC Good or Bad?
Like most things, ORAC valuation is neither intrinsically good nor bad; it is a tool which can be used for positive or negative purposes and comparisons, as long as the user is wise about how they plan to use ORAC in their own research and reading.
Here are a few items and observations to take away on ORAC:
- ORAC provides a laboratory value of the antioxidant capacity of substance in a container (in vitro), which as long as the method and substance preparation is exactly the same, laboratory comparisons can be made between substances.
- The preparation type of the food or supplement is important- for example: there is no difference between a grape and a raisin regarding intrinsic antioxidant capacity, however, in terms of ORAC value per 100 grams, the raisin will look like it has a higher ORAC number because water weight was removed. Similarly for spices- if you look at an ORAC table, many spices have a high ORAC value, but again that is per 100 grams of the spice. Comparisons between 2 substances also need to be the same regarding fresh or frozen comparisons (example: 100g of fresh aronia berry vs 100g of frozen acai berry would not be similar).
- ORAC is a laboratory value only (how many times has this been said!) By itself, ORAC can not provide any information on how much antioxidant activity is present in a living system, nor should be used independently for any assessment for clinical benefit.
- ORAC had been historically misused by some companies to promote their products by implying superior clinical response with a higher ORAC numerical value or artificially augmenting their ORAC assessments. . Independent research trials outside of ORAC number would be needed to clinically confirm any claimed clinical benefits.
Ok, so, if ORAC doesn’t tell us everything, is there anything else that could help us?
Yes. Some of these foods in ORAC also have complicated compounds of naturally occurring polyphenols (flavonoids, phenolic acids, stifling, and lignans). These are antioxidants, thus positively contribute to their ORAC valuation.
What is highly interesting is an increasing current body of research on the potential benefits of high polyphenol foods particularly Aronia.
Aronia has has the highest polyphenol and antioxidant content of any fruit on the Phenol-Explorer database, an assessment to assess and categorize content of the highest dietary sources of polyphenols (Perez-Jimenez, 2010)
So, there is currently a significant amount of study on Aronia (and other high polyphenolic dietary sources) which may demonstrate clinical benefits outside of the antioxidant measurements/capacity.
In the past few years, the amount of dedicated research and findings on dietary polyphenols continues to incresase, which is exciting.
Hopefully as part of this work, clinical breakthroughs in conditions such as heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Parkinson’s Disease can be made.
What is the ORAC for Aronia?
Aronia Guide did an extensive article on the ORAC value for Aronia including a discussion of antioxidants here.
Sources:
Bhagwat, S., Haytowitz, DB, and Holden, JM. Poster. “USDA Database For The Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) Database of Selected Foods” https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400525/Articles/AICR07_ORAC.pdf
Cunningham, E. 2013. “What Has Happened to the ORAC Database?” Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. p740. https://jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(13)00242-6/pdf
Haytowitz, DB, and Bhagwat, S. (Preparers). 2010. “USDA Database for the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) of Selected Foods, Release 2”. USDA Agricultural Research Service. http://www.orac-info-portal.de/download/ORAC_R2.pdf
Perez-Jimenez, J., Neveu, V., Vos, F., and Scalbert, A. 2010. “Identification of the 100 Richest Dietary Sources Of Polyphenols: an Application Of the Phenol-Explorer Database” European Journal Of Clinical Nutrition. 64(S112-S120).
Schauss, AG. 2012. “Should We Ditch the ORAC Antioxidant Test?” Nutritional Outlook. Accessed 2/12/2020. https://www.nutritionaloutlook.com/science/should-we-ditch-orac-antioxidant-test