Orange Aid

According to an article in the September 2010 issue of Better Homes and Gardens, researchers at State University of Buffalo, if you grab a fast-food breakfast with the works every now and then, don’t beat yourself up. The juice can decrease the meal’s harmful effects. When you eat a fatty fast-food-style meal, it causes your levels of free radicals to rise sharply. These harmful molecules ricochet through your body, damaging cells and setting the stage fro heart problems, diabetes, cancer, and other diseases. The Buffalo study looked at healthy people who ate a 900-calorie, high-fat breakfast with water, sugar water, or orange juice. The plain and sugar water group experienced free-radical increases of up to 63 percent, but those who drank OJ saw increases of just 47 percent. Moreover, the harmful blood components known as tool-like receptors, (TLRs), rose in all groups but the OJ drinkers. TLRs are thought to play a role in heart disease, obesity, and insulin resistance. Still, OJ is no anti-fat elixir. While it can help limit the unhealthy effects o0f one fat-laden meal, don’t make the drive-through a habit.