Hi, my name is Eric, and I'm an antioxidant addict.

I've always loved blueberries. When I heard that wild blueberries packed the most antioxidant punch, I had a great excuse to eat lots of blueberries for breakfast, lunch, and sometimes even dinner.

Antioxidants counter the effects of free-radical oxidants in our body. Since free radicals damage DNA and can speed up aging and cause cancer, any food that disarms anti-oxidants is worth considering.

You may have also heard about a compound in red wine - resveratrol - that increased the physical endurance and intelligence of lab rats in some studies. No, the rats weren't drinking vino - they were given very high does of purified resveratrol. It would be impossible for humans (or rats) to get the same dose of resveratrol from drinking red wine, as too much wine would be required to get an equivalent dose.

While I do enjoy moderate amounts of red wine, I try to get most of my antioxidants through whole fruits. Most of the antioxidants in fruits are in the skins, since the antioxidants help the plants protect their fruit from bacteria and fungi.  That's why red wine has resveratrol and white wine (which is made without the grape skins) doesn't.

I buy individually quick frozen wild blueberries (which you can get at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and most other supermarkets) and eat them on top of organic whole wheat toast with organic peanut butter. Initially, I just ate the berries frozen, but that's wasn't much fun. So I now microwave the whole thing - blueberries, peanut butter, and toast - for 90 seconds. It tastes great, and even better, apparently peanut butter also contain resveratrol! (About half the resveratrol as an equivalent weight of red wine.) I love blueberries so much that I've eaten the same thing for breakfast for the last five years. I'm still just as excited about the taste, so sometimes I'll also eat it for lunch or a snack.

Recently, I learned about açaí, a fruit from the Amazon that has even more antioxidants than blueberries. (Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone, who is 84, swears by açaí and calls it his anti-aging secret.)

What makes açaí so powerful? The seed takes up so much room in the fruit that only the outer skin is processed into food. Since the skin has most of the antioxidants in other berries, it makes sense that there would be more antioxidants in the açaí skins than in whole wild blueberries. The taste of açaí is great - it's like wild blueberry with a hint of chocolate - yet it's more expensive than wild blueberries and it's only available in the USA as a juice, sorbet, or smoothie mix. None of those would go very well on top of my toast...

Well, that's probably all you want to know about my berry obsession.  Find out next time why I love wild salmon and matcha green tea...

Santé!

Eric