Getting Antioxidants on a Budget

Recently, I posted about the problem that cheaper foods tend to include a lot of junk foods. For instance, you can easily get all your daily calories by buying the cheapest options at McDonalds or by buying M&Ms in bulk. That post left open the question: what should I eat if I want to get good nutrition and stay on a budget?

I took a simplified look at this problem. In addition to calories, I looked at the ORAC level of foods, which is a measure of their antioxidant power. To do this, I found an excellent ORAC table from the USDA. ORAC levels are often quoted per 100 gram sample (about 1/4th of a pound, or 4 oz). While this is a fair basis for comparision, it is fairly irrelevant to an eater. As an eater, I care much more about the ORAC units per calorie or ORAC units per dollar. The limits of my calorie budget (to avoid obesity) or my financial budget (to avoid bankruptcy) are much more restrictive than my limits due to stomach size. Doing evaluations on price is more difficult because unlike ORAC density or calorie density, price is not a property of the food, but of a local and fluctuating market. So, your results may be slightly different, but I collected these prices from the lowest available in my area (Gainesville, FL, USA) during late 2008 and early 2009. The results are as follows.

If I only want to maximize ORAC per calorie, which is to say: “price be damned, I only care about not getting too fat”, these are the foods that will help me do that:

Food	Orac/100g	Cost/100g	Cal/100g	Orac/cal	Orac/dol
Tea, green, brewed	1253	0.02	1	1253.0	71697.55
Spices, Cinnamon, ground	267536	0.66	247	1083.1	406225.23
Spices, cloves, ground	314446	17.21	323	973.5	18272.73
Spices, oregano, dried	200129	3.53	306	654.0	56636.51
Spices, turmeric	159277	5.94	354	449.9	26830.59
cocoa dry powder, unsweeted	80933	3.45	229	353.4	23470.57
Spices, basil, dried	67553	0.66	251	269.1	102572.11
Coriander (cilantro) raw	5141	1.4	23	223.5	3683.3
Ginger root	14840	0.81	80	185.5	18258.43
Plums (raw)	6259	0.42	46	136.1	15034.85
Blueberries, raw	6552	0.69	57	114.9	9463.23
Strawberries	3577	0.37	32	111.8	9759.36
Spices, pepper, black	27618	2.56	255	108.3	10798.42
Spices, Ginger, ground	28811	5.3	347	83.0	5435.68
Apples Granny Smith (with skin)	3898	0.42	52	75.0	9363.45
Spinach, raw	1515	0.85	23	65.9	1791.17
Goji Berries	25300	2.35	400	63.3	10775.05
Red table wine (cab)	5034	0.53	83	60.7	9438.75
Apples (with skin)	3082	0.37	52	59.3	10846.73
Spinach, frozen	1687	0.28	29	58.2	6105.13
Peppers, sweet, green, raw	923	0.28	20	46.2	3248.39
Applesauce canned, unsweeted	1965	0.19	43	45.7	10492.36
Juice, Concord Grape	2377	0.25	57	41.7	9582.49
Beets, raw	1767	0.66	43	41.1	2683
Broccoli, raw	1362	0.39	34	40.1	3534.96
Dark Chocolate	20823	3.5	520	40.0	5949.43
Peppers, sweet, orange, raw	984	1.1	25	39.4	895.26
Onions, red, raw	1521	0.28	40	38.0	5352.98
Oranges, raw, navals	1819	0.44	49	37.1	4149.88
Grapefruit, pink red	1548	0.15	42	36.9	10068.65
Garlic	5346	0.5	149	35.9	10598.62

Notice, that spices are so high in ORACs, they are an easy way to increase the ORACs in your diet. There are some of the usual suspects up there as well: green tea, berries, apples, spinach, red wine. Tea has almost no calories, so it naturally will be high on this list.

But let’s look at how to get a sufficient amount of ORACs within both a calorie and financial budget. To do that, we need to identify the budget. Exactly how many ORACs a person needs is probably not a completely well defined question because of individual differences and the limitations of ORACs as some kind of unified measure of nutrition (which it is not, and I am not claiming that it is). That having been said, I’ve seen the number 5000 ORAC/day as a target (which is approximately what you’d get if you get 5 servings of most fruits or vegetables a day). For the calorie budget, I’ll assume 2000 calories per day (get a better estimate for yourself with the Nutritiondata.com daily needs tool). For the financial budget, I found a 2003-2004 USDA study on food spending that found that the poorest 20% spent on average 1737 per year in 2004, so that gives us 4.76 to spend per day. Since many high ORAC foods are not consumed in large quantities (such as spices), but some other medium ORAC foods are (such as beans or shreaded wheat), I limited the foods to more than 272 cal/dol, which is $7.35/day. I did this to get a list of 20 foods. Then I sorted them according to highest ORAC/dollar. The following list is the cheapest way to get ORACs and still get enough calories each day to not spend too much on food:

Food	Orac/100g	Cost/100g	Cal/100g	Orac/cal	Orac/dol	cal/dol
Spices, Cinnamon, ground	267536	0.66	247	1083.1	406225.23	375.04
Spices, basil, dried	67553	0.66	251	269.1	102572.11	381.12
Beans, kidney, raw	8459	0.22	333	25.4	38403.86	1511.82
Beans, black, raw	8040	0.22	341	23.6	36501.6	1548.14
Lentils, raw	7282	0.22	353	20.6	33060.28	1602.62
Plums (dried)	6552	0.44	240	27.3	14902.38	545.87
Garlic	5346	0.5	149	35.9	10598.62	295.4
Grapefruit, pink red	1548	0.15	42	36.9	10068.65	273.18
Nuts, pecans	17940	1.98	691	26.0	9059.8	348.96
Nuts, walnut	13541	1.65	654	20.7	8207.76	396.42
Raisins, seedless	3037	0.49	299	10.2	6156.67	606.14
Bananas	879	0.15	89	9.9	5783.57	585.59
Potatoes, red, flesh and skin, raw	1098	0.22	70	15.7	4994.91	318.44
Peanuts, raw	3166	0.66	567	5.6	4791.21	858.06
Nuts, almonds	4454	1.54	575	7.7	2892.87	373.46
Cereal, shreaded wheat plain	1303	0.66	340	3.8	1986.53	518.36
Popcorn, airpopped	1743	0.99	387	4.5	1757.1	390.13
Watermelon, raw	142	0.11	30	4.7	1293.67	273.31
Nuts, cashew	1948	1.87	553	3.5	1041.69	295.71
Olive oil, extra virgin	1150	1.27	884	1.3	907.34	697.47

It’s interesting that when we sort by ORAC/dollar and put a price threshold, very different foods show up. We can see how great beans are with this list: when you buy dried beans in bulk you get an extremely healthy food which is also extremely economical: more than 1500 calories per dollar! Of course, these prices assume you are getting the very best deals: so one needs to shop at club stores and buy food from the bulk bins. Dried Plums, or Prunes, also show up as big winners: about twice the ORACs/dollar of raisins with about the same calories/dollar. Notice also, that stawberries and blueberries are great (high ORAC/calorie as we saw in the first chart), but they are too expensive to form a significant portion of your calories. When it comes to nuts, pecans and walnuts are excellent choices: they give you lots of ORACs and lots of calories.

One last point I want to make is that paying attention to the seasonal sales in fruits and vegetables makes a lot of sense. The prices may change by more than a factor of three as items go in and out of season, so make sure to try to choose seasonal vegetables and fruits. Also, compare the calories/dollar of canned, frozen and dried vs. fresh fruits and vegetables. Often fresh costs more and in many recipes you won’t notice any difference.

You can find the above data on a google spreadsheet containing the ORAC data.

Update 3/10/2009: Here’s a related NY Times article: “Eating Well on a Downsized Food Budget” published 3/2/2009.

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