According to a study from Buffalo, consuming foods consisting of flavonoids, orange juice, in this case, together with a high-fat, high-carbohydrate fast-food meal appears to balance the oxidative and inflammatory stress generated by the unhealthy food and helps in preventing blood vessel injury.

This news appears to have given some insight concerning flavonoids.

Free radicals or reactive oxygen species are supposedly recognized to stimulate inflammation in blood vessel linings and add to the risk of heart attack and stroke. Study authors are of the view that the powerful defensive effect of orange juice is most likely connected with its heavy load of the flavonoids naringenin and hesperidin that are considered to be major antioxidants.

Husam Ghanim, PhD, Lead Author on the study, commented, “Our data show, for the first time to our knowledge, that drinking orange juice with a meal high in fat and carbohydrates prevented the marked increases in reactive oxygen species and other inflammatory agents”.

Assessments of the samples after meal appeared to show that oxygen free radicals boosted an average of 62% with water, 63% with the glucose and 47% with orange juice. Furthermore, there appeared to be a swell in blood components called toll-like receptors, which apparently play an essential function in the development of inflammation, atherosclerosis, obesity, and insulin resistance. Also damage to cardiac cells might occur after a blocked vessel is reopened.

Orange juice also appears to prevent a significant rise in SOCS-3, an important mediator of insulin resistance that could lead to development of type 2 diabetes.

The study came out in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.