The ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorption Capacity) assay is a laboratory procedure developed in 1992 at the National Institutes of aging (NIA) in Silver Springs, Maryland. The ORAC scale has been adopted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) who, in cooperation with scientists at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, has recently applied the ORAC assay to measure the antioxidant capacities of many foods, juices, and oils. The higher the ORAC score, the more capable that particular food or oil is of destroying free radicals, thus retarding the aging process and preventing cancers and other diseases. The lists on the next page give some examples of ORAC scores:
Antioxidant (ORAC) Scores (umTE/100gm)*
For Selected Fruits and Vegetables |
| Carrots |
210 |
| Oranges |
750 |
| Beets |
840 |
| Raspberries |
1,220 |
| Strawberries |
1,540 |
| Blueberries |
2,400 |
| Wolfberries |
25,300 |
Antioxidant (ORAC) Scores (umTE/100gm)*
For Selected Essential Oils |
| Sandalwood (aloes) |
160 |
| Frankincense |
630 |
| Rose of Sharon (Cistus) |
3,860 |
| Cinnamon |
10,340 |
| Spikenard |
54,800 |
| Myrrh |
379,800 |
| Clove |
1,078,700 |
* NOTE: ORAC units above are micromole (um) Trolox Equivaments (TE) per 100 grams. Some sources give ORAC per kilograms whose values are 10 times higher. When comparing ORAC values, one must be sure they are in the same units.
All of the oils listed above were in use during Biblical times and all but Clove are mentioned in the Bible by name. The contrast in the two sets of figures is striking. Chinese wolfberries are the highest scoring food in the world while clove is the highest scoring essential oil which is 40 times more potent as an antioxidant than wolfberries, 450 times more than blueberries, and 5,000 times more than carrots. Most essential oils score higher than most fruits and vegetables, as the two tables above suggest.
In fact, essential oils have the highest ORAC scores of all the substances in the world. An ounce of Clove Oil has the antioxidant capacity of 320 pounds of carrot, 28 quarts of blueberries, or 10 gallons of beet juice. While eating foods high in antioxidants is a desirable and very healthy thing to so. learning to use essential oils in your daily life can potentially be even more desirable and health producing. The exceptionally high ORAC scores of essential oils partially explains why living with them in your daily environment - to breathe, eat, and apply to your body - can support all of your systems and contribute effectively towards long healthful living, even when used in very small quantities, and even when only inhaling them.