ORAC
(Oxygen Radical Absorption Capacity) Training
By Lori Newburg, December 2003
If you don't know me personally, allow me to introduce
myself. I am the Product Development Manager for
a major contract manufacturer of dietary supplements
in New York, and I’ve worked in the industry
since 1987. My background is in laboratory science
and quality control, and now I have a really exciting
job as I build my Xango business! We contract
manufacture the products of large companies you
would definitely know well, which means we manufacture
their formulas for them and put their labels on
the bottles (also known as private labeling).
What this means is that I get paid to help our
customers bring new products to market, and that
includes lots of meetings with manufacturers,
tons of brochures about new product releases,
walking the floor at trade shows, and hours upon
hours of research. One of the latest buzzwords
in the industry to appear in the last year, ORAC
Value, came up during a recent brainstorming call,
and I want to bring home to you what this means
for us in terms of marketing our product, because
it’s extremely timely and important.
ORAC is a new industry term, which means "Oxidative
Radical Absorption Capacity." This recently
developed laboratory test is a measurement of
a substance's ability to neutralize the free radicals
that damage cells. This measurement is just hitting
its stride in the industry, with more and more
companies coming out with high-ORAC berry products
as the public begins to understand the importance
of antioxidants. Berries, by the way, typically
have a higher-than-average ORAC value, while tasting
great at the same time, which makes them an excellent
choice for this new class of products.
We all know that we're supposed to consume 5 servings
of fresh fruits and vegetables each day for optimal
health. But why? So that we can not only get our
daily intake of vitamins, minerals, and fiber,
but also our ORAC dose for the day! This is the
previously unidentified and mysterious power of
fruits and vegetables. 5 servings of fresh fruits
and vegetables typically provide an average of
about 1650 ORAC Units, according to my largest
fruit and vegetable powder supplier. They introduced
me to this new analytical test about a year ago
and I helped to develop the first high-ORAC chewable
fruit tablet on the market.
What does this mean for those of us lucky enough
to be consuming Xango? Let's do a comparison,
and I'm going to include Goji juice for those
of us who are actively competing head to head
with that product.
I’ve been told that Goji juice contains
4200 ORAC Units per 1 ounce. With the typical
recommended serving being 2 ounces per day, a
day's worth of Goji gives you 8400 ORAC Units,
or a little more than 5 times what your 5 servings
of fresh fruits and vegetables would provide.
Not bad, and certainly more doable. And incidentally,
that is superior to other wolfberry juices out
there (same species of fruit, Lycium barbarum,
but different variety). You’d have to consume
25 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables to
equal it! Drinking Goji juice is certainly an
easier choice for our busy lifestyle in this country.
Now let’s look closely at Xango. Xango contains
an impressive 17,000-24,000 ORAC Units per 1 ounce!
(That’s about 4-6 times stronger than Goji
when comparing on a per-ounce basis.) Multiply
that by 3 for the typical recommended daily serving
of 3 ounces, and what do you get? A staggering
51,000-72,000 ORAC Units, or roughly 31-43 times
that provided by the government-recommended 5
servings of fresh fruits and vegetables per day!!!
That means you would have to eat between 155-215
servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every
day to equal the antioxidant action of the yummy
3 ounces of juice we’re consuming with ease!
How amazing is that bit of information?? Now let’s
take it even one step further and think about
how much it would cost to eat that many servings
of fresh produce per day, each and every month,
assuming you could actually do it. Would it be
a bit more expensive than a case of Xango each
month??? Talk about a concentrated powerhouse
of a product we have here!
IF someone should ask you how much the ORAC Value
is Per 100 Grams of Xango, that's equivalent to
about 3.5 ounces. You can respond with a whopping
59,500-84,000 ORAC Units! 100 grams is the standard
portion size used in our industry for nutritional
analysis (calories, protein, carbohydrates, etc.)
in the laboratory, so some people may go by that
value because it's an understood standard measurement
used for product comparison.
Now you should understand from a different perspective
why this product works so well. ORAC Value is
the newest buzzword in the industry, and I highly
recommend that you learn how to walk this talk.
This is going to be common knowledge for the public
very soon, because basic understanding regarding
the importance of antioxidants in maintaining
good health is growing rapidly. This terminology
is the next step of public education. This test
score demonstrates the actual ability of our product
to neutralize those destructive free radicals
just by using a comparison of numbers. Anyone
can understand that some numbers are much bigger
than other numbers, and that a higher score on
any test is better, without needing to get into
a major scientific discussion. What I've given
you here is the layperson's interpretation of
a very important scientific discovery. Learn this,
and set yourself apart in this industry. Become
the first person to introduce your prospects to
this important discovery and cement your credibility.
When they finally hear about it on the evening
news, they will remember that you taught it to
them first. How amazing will that be for your
business?
This test score is what sets Xango apart from
other juice products on the market. The reason
for the extraordinarily high antioxidant activity
is the natural power of the over 40 xanthones
contained in the Mangosteen fruit, and that is
the follow up point for those who need a longer
explanation. But this is how we can explain the
free radical scavenging capacity of this product
to everyone very easily! Just show them the comparison
of numbers and become their ORAC expert.
I’m including here some free public information
from the web that will show you the ORAC Values
for different fruits and vegetables. You’ll
see that the portion size tested was that 100
grams that I mentioned. They’ve very nicely
broken down the numbers to show not only the total
ORAC Value for that portion, but the calories
in that 100 gram portion, and then the ORAC per
calorie and ORAC per gram. This is some high tech
information that you generally won’t need,
but we all know that there will always be that
one prospect that wants to see some sort of documentation
beyond our explanation to prove that we know what
we’re talking about. There is also a nice
discussion on this site about ORAC if you’d
like to learn more about the science without actually
becoming a scientist. CLICK
HERE
