Nature's Bounty: Booty Marks

Getting the best for our brains and bodies—antioxidants are just the start of it—means selecting scraggly and scarred produce over their supersized cousins.
By Daniel A. Marano, published on March 01, 2008 - last reviewed on April 29, 2008

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  • Fresh fruits and vegetables are the best sources, followed by flash frozen.
  • Look for wild-crop berries and fruits.
  • Select organic produce and wash, but don't peel. Organic produce has more phytochemicals, and the skin (where many of the phytochemicals lie) is safe to eat .
  • Avoid heavily filtered juices, from which many of the flavonoids are stripped.
  • Don't instinctively reach for the biggest and most uniform produce; they lack the benefits that stressed and undersized fruits have fought for.
  • Science is only starting to understand the synergistic effects of these compounds, so don't overinvest in any single one. Jim Joseph says it best: "Follow the advice of mothers everywhere: Eat the whole damn fruit and as much of it as you can."
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