The Stalwart: The Antioxidant Arms-Race

At The Stalwart we're fascinated by what I'll call the industrial "arms-race"; think AMD & Intel battling it out to squeeze more and more transistors on a chip, camera-makers increasing the number of megapixels in a photo, or even Gillette and Schick racing to put more blades on a razor. Every industry features competition and innovation but what makes these situations interesting is that there are simple numerical-scales which helps us measure and track the developments.

It's not quite that easy, of course. The Schick Quattro doesn't just compete with the Mach 3, it also competes with the Mach 3 that vibrates and thus there are qualities that aren't so simple to quantify.

What's really interesting is that this kind of arms-race of one-upmanship isn't just confined to technology. Consider the case of the healthful antioxidants in the area of nutrition. Here's Wikipedia on antioxidants, just for a refresher:

An antioxidant is a chemical that prevents the oxidation of other chemicals. In biological systems, the normal processes of oxidation (plus a minor contribution from ionizing radiation) produce highly reactive free radicals. These can readily react with and damage other molecules: in some cases the body uses this to fight infection. In other cases, the damage may be to the body's own cells. The presence of extremely easily oxidisable compounds in the system can "mop up" free radicals before they damage other essential molecules.

Common antioxidants include vitamin A (found in carrots, squash, broccoli, and kale), vitamin C (green leafy vegetables, citrus), and vitamin E (wheat germ, whole grains, fish oils). The list of foods high in antioxidants isn't too surprising; most people would probably consider a diet consisting of fish, whole grains, carrots, broccoli, squash and kale to be a pretty good one.

But some folks aren't content to eat a merely healthy diet. They want to every bite of food to have the power of a curative medicine. For them there's a large industry devoted to discovering and encapsulating the most antioxidant-rich foods from the far-corners of the planet.

Just like the semiconductor industry, the antioxidant industry seems to be governed by some permutation of Moore's law that says every couple of years, a new fruit or berry will be discovered to have more antioxidant value than the last. Meanwhile your meager servings of kale, or wheat-germ for breakfast is looking as good as an Intel 386.

And just like any of the aforementioned industries, antioxidants have their own measurement system known as ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) a measure of a food's antioxidant capacity. I won't go into the science (as if I could), but if you're interested, here's a PubMed search on the subject.

The first antioxidant powerhouses to hit the scene were berries. Here's a presentation from the Blueberry Council, making the case that berries are superior, on an ORAC scale, to almost all other fruits and vegetables. Of course, that was back in 1998, the stone age for this rapidly evolving space. Within the past several years, we've seen the invasion of green tea. It too is known for its antioxidant health benefits, and so it's now bottled, infused into pizza crusts, and turned into ice cream/skin-cream/shampoo. Everywhere you look articles tout its benefits, usually with some introduction about how the Chinese (or the Japanese, take your pick) have known about its benefits for thousands of years, and use it to live long and healthful lives.

Now let me take a moment to say that I'm a skeptic about most radical health-claims. What may have a kernel of truth can easily be conflated and distorted. The point of this entry is not to discuss healthy foods, but to examine the arms-race phenomenon. Whether green tea is actually healthier than berries, or whether berries healthier than oranges isn't as relevant as whether and how this industry always attempts to come out with a "new best thing".

Here's an example of the health-claims for green tea from a website that sells the stuff:

Epigallocatechin (EGCG), an antioxidant found in green tea, is at least 100 more times more effective than vitamin C and 25 times more effective than vitamin E at protecting cells and DNA from damage believed to be linked to cancer, heart disease and other serious illnesses. This antioxidant has twice the benefits of resveratrol, found in red wine.

It then goes on to say it has a regulating effect on blood sugar and blood-pressure, and that it fights cancer. Again, caveat emptor. Also, notice the numerical emphasis.

Of course, these days green tea is looking as hot as a 1 GHZ Pentium III. Maybe it still does the trick, but the early adopters have long ago moved on. The company Sambazon markets drinks based on the rare Brazilian berry açaí. I've seen marketing literature for this company that sneers at the people who are still eating mere blueberries for their health-benefits. Here's an article from earlier this year about the fruit and it's amazing health benefits. The "discovery" of this fruit in the Brazilian rainforest has the same feel as Ponce De Leon's search for a fountain of youth, or Coronado's for a city of gold.

If you live in New York, you've no doubt seen the ads for Pom, which makes the pomegranate-based Pom-Wonderful drinks. The marketing suggests that one bottle a day of the stuff will give you a shot at immortality!

But it looks like the pomegranate too may go the way of the square wheel, as the company XanGo attempts to sell juice of the exotic mangosteen for, get this, over $25/bottle at places like Whole Foods. This one is already being marketed as the Daisy Cutter of antioxidants and people are willing to pay.

But somehow I doubt that the oddly-named mangosteen (which by the way is a truly delicious tropical fruit!) will last long as the antioxidant king of the hill. Just last week, researchers announced the development of a red-kiwi that will have robust anti-oxidant qualities.

Ultimately, what makes the antioxidant industry interesting is how the discovery and commercialization of new fruits really does mirror, in many ways, what in other fields seems to be a matter of technological advance. Like semiconductors, the ORAC scale operates on a function with diminishing marginal gains as it goes up. But also like semiconductors, it doesn't matter if, at the moment, consumers don't need more speed/ORAC, the companies must keep outdoing each other. Because there are different kinds of antioxidants, the actual numbers don't tell the whole story about what foods are best, as other factors come into play (sort of like when Mac-owners insist that GHZ don't matter and that measures, like Bus speed, are what make the difference...and so as not to offend Mac-users, I'll note that this post is being written on a Mac).

The last example, of the red-kiwi is interesting, because it's a reminder that the path of technological progress, and that of nature, have long ago merged, and that the antioxidant bombs of the future may not even exist yet, let alone discovered in some far-off rainforest.

We tend to place different kinds of products into artificially distinct categories. There's commodities in the ground (oil), commodities based on commodities in the ground (steel), commodities we grow (wheat), commodities we design (flash-memory), and then a host of things which we don't identify as commodities, but at times might be. But identifying similar themes and trends across fields should help us expand our thinking, and break-down these artificial distinctions. Eventually, we'll have no choice when bio and nanotechnology truly change the nature of so many things we use today and our understanding of cycles, scarcity and innovation change. It's good to start thinking about these things now.

The Stalwart

The Antioxidant Arms-Race

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