New Scientist on antioxidants

From:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125631.500.html
"You name it, if it's an antioxidant, we'll swallow it by the bucket-load. According to some estimates around half the adults in the US take antioxidant pills daily in the belief they promote good health and stave off disease. We have become antioxidant devotees. But are they doing us any good? Evidence gathered over the past few years shows that at best, antioxidant supplements do little or nothing to benefit our health. At worst, they may even have the opposite effect, promoting the very problems they are supposed to stamp out."
The article needs subscrption. The gist is that antioxidants work when taken in the form of naturally occuring vegetables and fruits, they rarely work and may be even harmful (except in some cases of particular deficiencies). The scientists are not sure of the mechanisms involved; may be fibrous material in vegetables and some other unknown mechanisms may be involved.