5 servings of fruit and vegetables - why are they so important?

“You should have at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables every day” Sounds familiar? I bet you said yes. Doctors and nutritionists around the world constantly remind us of the importance of eating greens. See what we discovered and see why.

Fruit and vegetables apart from all the beneficial vitamins and nutrients are important sources of antioxidants. Antioxidants slow down the ageing process and protect against the harmful effect of free radicals. It is best to eat raw fruit and vegetables and juice may be the perfect option on a busy day.

We decided to conduct a simple experiment in which we compared peach and carrot juice. We wanted to see how they handle free radicals scavenging. We filled 0.5 ml Eppendorf with 150 ml of carrot juice and 150 ml of 1 mM nitroxide spin probe. The EPR signal from the sample was measured for 15 minutes using the Novilet L-band system. Then an analogous experiment was carried out with peach juice.

After 15 minutes of the experiment, the signal from the carrot juice decreased exponentially by nearly 80%, while in the case of peach juice, the signal decay was linear and only decreased by about 20%