What is the best antioxidant?

Everywhere you turn these days you see advice about getting more antioxidants in your diet, in your skin care products, and your vitamins. The theory about oxidative damage as a major factor in aging has been around for several decades, and it’s a good one. It’s those products of metabolic combustion (we are essentially burning caloric fuel with oxygen) that cause so much damage to our DNA, which in turn means the proteins and other things that constitute the tissues of our bodies improperly manufactured. Eventually, things just break down. So if we can limit the oxidation, we can slow down aging.
That’s where antioxidants come in. For years, faith was placed in the antioxidant vitamins (A,C, and E) for salvation, but every major study has found no benefit to taking supplements above the recommended daily allowance. It’s not for lack of studies, there are actually dozens of them, there is just no benefit and it appears that it may actually be harmful. But don’t look to this lack of effect to question the antioxidant theory, it’s just that there are better antioxidants out there. These are a family of molecules called polyphenols, which include the pigments in berries and fruits, and the now famous extracts of wine such as resveratrol.
So which one is best? I’m banking on the wine polyphenols. A couple of years ago, I tested a skin care product containing resveratrol at the same concentration as another antioxidant called idebenone in the product Prevage. Previously, Prevage had tested their formula against all other antioxidants out there: alpha lipoic acid, vitamins, you name it. Prevage announced that it was the strongest antioxidant on the market. But using a standard antioxidant test called ORAC (there are different ways to measure antioxidant potency) we found that the resveratrol product was 17 times stronger.
So rather than pumping vitamins, it makes the most sense to just eat whole foods with antioxidants already in. These include pigmented berries, pomegranate juice, acai, and of course red wine.