Coffee: the "biggest antioxidant in US diet"

Foods and beverages are better antioxidants than antioxidant vitamins, according to research conducted at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, USA, which also found that coffee was the most important phenol-rich food in the typical US diet.

A research team led by Joe Vinson used market samples of common fruits, vegetables, spices, nuts, grains, oils and beverages to determine their total amount of phenols using an analysis that measured the extract's antioxidant activity and health benefits using an in vitro model of cardiac disease.

Prof Vinson's team concentrated on phenols rather than antioxidants because of recent epidemiological data suggesting that polyphenols consumed in foods may be the major agents responsible for dietary health benefits - not the antioxidant vitamins C and E, as originally assumed. Using the polyphenol content data and the US Department of Agriculture database of per capita food consumption, Prof Vinson calculated the contribution of each type of food to the average estimated intake of phenolic antioxidants for 2003. Total per capita phenolic antioxidants in the US diet was 2.2g.